Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/322

296 Hatch, in Somersetshire, about the year 1840. She had the reputation of being able to cure what was then known as 'King's Evil.' The writer, then about ten years old, was suffering from an abscess in the lower jaw, which many doctors failed to cure, and the superstitious ones pronounced it to be a genuine case of 'King's Evil.' Accordingly he was taken to the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter that she might exercise her healing virtues upon the wound. She was a girl of sixteen years of age. The method of procedure was to visit the girl for seven successive mornings and then to miss seven mornings and again repeat the visits in the same order. The patient must be the first person the operator should see on the morning of the visits. She came downstairs to a room where the patient was alone, then taking her spittle upon the point of her middle finger, she would cross the wound three times without saying a word, she afterwards retired to her room and the patient left the house. This treatment was continued for about six months, and it is hardly necessary to say that no cure was effected. No fixed charge was made, but a present was expected to be made to the girl's parents.

"The 'King's Evil' was simply the effect of a diseased tooth, the removal of which later on effected a cure in a fortnight."

Elmham, Norfolk.