being submitted to physicians for solution, was nevertheless the victim of a belief that supernatural powers may reside in certain human beings. Speaking of the cure of the "King's Evil"—also called by him "struma" and "scrofula"—Wiseman, in the chapter which he devotes to this subject, makes the following statement:—
But when upon trial he (the chirurgeon) shall find the contumaciousness
of the disease, which frequently deluded his best
care and industry, he will find reason of acknowledging the goodness
of God; who hath dealt so bountifully with this Nation in
giving the Kings of it, at least from Edward the Confessor downwards
(if not for a longer time), an extraordinary power in the
miraculous cure thereof. . . . I myself have been a frequent
eye-witness of many hundreds of cures performed by his Majesty's
touch alone, without any assistance of chirurgery; and those, many
of them, such as had tired out the endeavors of able chirurgeons
before they came thither.
Some years before his death, which occurred in 1686,
Wiseman was given the title of Serjeant-Chirurgeon to
King Charles the Second.
