Curing the 'King's Evil' with and without a King

It could be ugly, painful, and embarrassing. The lymphnodes around the neck would become infected, causing swollen lumps that sometimes festered, weeping puss, pain, and foul odor. It was called scrofula or the 'King's Evil' - not because kings caused it, but because certain kings were claimed to have the power to heal it. They didn't, of course, but sometimes the disease went into remission or altogether healed naturally, which went to the credit of the king. A king who was believed to have the power to heal was a magical, miraculous, powerful king indeed, seemingly deserving honor, glory, respect, and fear.

By the 17th century, the royal touch of British nobility had already been happening for hundreds of years. It had become part of the ceremony for the king to touch the infected patient after which the recipient of the touching would be given a coin or token as a parting gift, sort of the royal equivalent of a sacred relic blessed by clergy. The touch-piece usually had a hole in it for a ribbon to be strung through so it could be worn around the sick person's infected neck. The touch-pieces were made of gold, silver, copper, brass, or base metal, but what was supposed to be most important were the miraculous healing properties conveyed to it by the king.

A royal touch-coin for the King's Evil, featuring St. Michael the Archangel defeating the dragon. (Courtesy of The Royal Mint)

"The Royal Gift of Healing," frontispiece of "Adenochoiradelogia, or An anatomick-chirurgical treatise of glandules & strumaes, or Kings-Evil-swellings : Together with the royal gift of healing, or cure thereof by contact or imposition of hands, performed for above 640 years by our Kings of England, continued with their admirable effects, and miraculous events; and concluded with many wonderful examples of cures by their sacred touch," by John Browne, 1684

In the dramatic scene above, the sufferer submissively kneels before the king who lays hands on the afflicted. The royal pomposity of the scene is completed by the clergy gathered on one side to observe the miracles performed by their king. His doting court hovered nearby on his other side, better dressed for a ball than the sickroom scene playing out before them; and his armed guards stood vigilantly in two rows in front of him, keeping control over the throngs of his sick subjects, young and old, who awaited their turn for his royal curing touch. Note also the king's dark-clothed assistant, immediately to his right, holding a touch-piece with its ribbon hanging down from it, ready to give it to the afflicted man once he had received the king's touch.

Scrofula came to the American colonies, but the king did not. So what did colonists stricken with scrofula do in his absence? The best they could.

Ann Edmonds helped her husband run their tavern (called an ordinary) in Lynn, Massachusetts. It was a full-scale business of its type, providing lodging, food, and alcoholic drinks to travelers. Goodwife Edmonds also had developed the reputation of being "a doctor woman" and the ordinary was therefore also a destination for the thirsty, hungry, tired, and sick.

In February 1657 she was doctoring a young girl named Mary Greene, who was suffering from what Goodwife Edmonds diagnosed as the King's Evil in one of the girl's shins. Even if the girl was back in England, she had become sick at a time that England didn't have a king, so the Greene's sought a cure from Ann Edmonds.

The Greene’s daughter first stayed with a doctor named Thomas Starr in Charlestown, but despite his healing efforts, the open wound continued to fester, so the Greenes brought her to the Edmonds ordinary to see if the woman doctor in Lynn could be any more successful. Other women who assisted Goodwife Edmonds reported the girl's leg was “in a verry bad condition, both running and raw with corruption, swelling and looking eager and red” and that the flesh was “all rotten about the sore and stinked.” The Edmonds’ seventeen-year-old son Joseph agreed that the wound looked “rotten and it Stunke.” The squeamish teenager also recalled that while he “did daily see a great care and diligence and paines” taken by his stepmother “about dressing the sore with much tenderness,” the stench was so bad “that he was not able to indure it.”

Mary stayed at the tavern as Ann Edmonds’ patient for about eleven months, during which time the doctress removed a five-inch piece of decaying bone from Mary’s shin, applied healing agents to the wound, and administered a special diet to the girl. Ann made sure her young patient had the benefits of fresh meat and greens, even during times of the year when they were “difficult to ataine.” Family and neighbors testified to the girl’s steady improvement, but when Thomas Starr was told about the child’s gradual recovery, the jealous doctor harrumphed that “he would eat a firebrand if she cured it.” The crestfallen Starr was not pleased or satisfied with reports that under the care of a competitor (and a woman at that) the leg of his former patient had come to have “very little soreness or pain” and that the girl “could leap about very lively.”

Twenty-one years later, a grown up Mary Greene got married and went on to have four children. Maybe it was Starr who needed the King's touch after swallowing that firebrand.

For more on Ann Edmonds and the King's Evil, see:

PROMISING CURES, Vol.1, Prologue: Poking and Prodding