it, and, among her other patients, performed the royal operation upon a
child, who, in spite of his, disease, grew up at last into Samuel
Johnson. After laying his hand upon the sufferers, it was customary for
the monarch to hang a gold piece around the neck of each patient. Very
strict precautions were adopted to prevent those who thought more of the
golden angel hung round the neck by a white ribbon, than of relief of
their bodily infirmities, from making too many calls, as they sometimes
attempted to do. According to the statement of the advocates and
contemporaries of this remedy, none ever failed of receiving benefit
unless their little faith and credulity starved their merits. Some are
said to have been cured immediately on the very touch, others did not so
easily get rid of their swellings, until they were touched a second time.
Several cases are related, of persons who had been blind for several
weeks, and months, and obliged even to be led to Whitehall, yet recovered
their sight immediately upon being touched, so as to walk away without
any guide." So widely, at one period, was the belief diffused, that, in
the course of twelve years, nearly a hundred thousand persons were
touched by Charles the Second. Catholic divines; in disputes upon the
orthodoxy of their church, did not deny that the power had descended to
protestant princes;--Dr. Harpsfield, in his "Ecclesiastical History of
England," admitted it, and in Wiseman's words, "when Bishop Tooker would
make use of this Argument to prove the Truth of our Church, Smitheus doth
not thereupon go about to deny the Matter of fact; nay, both he and Cope
acknowledge it." "I myself," says Wiseman, the best English surgical
writer of his day,[Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. iii. p.
103.]--"I my self have been a frequent Eye-witness of many hundred of
Cures performed by his Majesties Touch alone, without any assistance of
Chirurgery; and those, many of them such as had tired out the endeavours
of able Chirurgeons before they came hither. It were endless to recite
what I myself have seen, and what I have received acknowledgments of by