The Cure of the King's Evil: When Royal Touch Was Considered Magic Medicine

For over 700 years, European monarchs - especially French and English kings - claimed to possess a supernatural healing power: the ability to cure a painful disease called scrofula (tuberculosis of the lymph nodes) simply by touching people. Kings would hold elaborate "touching ceremonies" where hundreds or thousands of afflicted people would line up to be touched by the monarch's hand, believing the royal touch would cure them. Remarkably, many people reported being healed - not because the king had magical powers, but because of the placebo effect and the power of belief.

Scrofula was a real disease - a bacterial infection of the lymph nodes that caused painful swelling, open sores, and disfigurement. It was incurable by medieval and  ...