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Updated: May 19, 2025
We are ashamed of such maladies as affect others, and are either dangerous or disagreeable to them. Of the epilepsy; because it gives a horror to every one present: Of the itch; because it is infectious: Of the king's-evil; because it commonly goes to posterity. Men always consider the sentiments of others in their judgment of themselves.
Folkard mentions a curious superstition which exists in the neighbourhood of Orleans, where a seventh son without a daughter intervening is called a Marcon. It is believed that, "the Marcon's body is marked somewhere with a Fleur-de-Lis, and that if a patient suffering under king's-evil touch this Fleur-de-Lis, or if the Marcon breathe upon him, the malady will be sure to disappear."
He wanted to glide out the back way and start at once; but I showed him that that wouldn't answer. You see, he was billed for the king's-evil to touch for it, I mean and it wouldn't be right to disappoint the house and it wouldn't make a delay worth considering, anyway, it was only a one-night stand. And I thought he ought to tell the queen he was going away. He clouded up at that and looked sad.
I never meddled in these matters, they weren't my affair, but I did hate to see the way things were going on, and I don't mind saying that much. Many's the time she had asked me, "Sir Boss, hast seen Sir Launcelot about?" but if ever she went fretting around for the king I didn't happen to be around at the time. There was a very good lay-out for the king's-evil business very tidy and creditable.
Wherever you find a king who can't cure the king's-evil you can be sure that the most valuable superstition that supports his throne the subject's belief in the divine appointment of his sovereign has passed away. In my youth the monarchs of England had ceased to touch for the evil, but there was no occasion for this diffidence: they could have cured it forty-nine times in fifty.
This practice, then, of a mother giving mercury, whether in the form either of calomel or of grey powder, cannot be too strongly reprobated, as the frequent administration either of the one or of the other weakens the body, predisposes it to cold, and frequently excites king's-evil a disease too common in this country.
Thus, by the substitution of nickels for gold on a king's-evil day, I not only injured no one, dissatisfied no one, but pleased all concerned and saved four-fifths of that day's national expense into the bargain a saving which would have been the equivalent of $800,000 in my day in America.
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