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 Letter, not only from the severall parts of this Nation, but also from Ireland, Scotland, Jersey, Garnsey.  It is needless also to remember what Miracles of this nature were performed by the very Bloud of his late Majesty of Blessed memory, after whose decollation by the inhuman Barbarity of the Regicides, the reliques of that were gathered on Chips and in Handkerchieffs by the pious Devotes, who could not but think so great a suffering in so honourable and pious a Cause, would be attended by an extraordinary assistance of God, and some more then ordinary a miracle:  nor did their Faith deceive them in this there point, being so many hundred that found the benefit of it.” [Severall Chirurgicall Treatises.  London.1676. p. 246.]

Obstinate and incredulous men, as he tells us, accounted for these cures in three ways:  by the journey and change of air the patients obtained in coming to London; by the influence of imagination; and the wearing of gold.

To these objections he answers, 1st.  That many of those cured were inhabitants of the city. 2d.  That the subjects of treatment were frequently infants. 3d.  That sometimes silver was given, and sometimes nothing, yet the patients were cured.

A superstition resembling this probably exists at the present time in some ignorant districts of England and this country.  A writer in a Medical Journal in the year 1807, speaks of a farmer in Devonshire, who, being a ninth son of a ninth son, is thought endowed with healing powers like those of ancient royalty, and who is accustomed one day in every week to strike for the evil.