Folk-Lore of Shakespeare

Excerpt: ...no less than 92,107 persons were touched for this disease. The first English monarch who refused to touch for the king's evil was William III., but the practice was resumed by Queen Anne, who officially announced, in the London Gazette, March 12, 1712, her royal intention to receive patients afflicted with the malady in question. It was probably about that time that Johnson was touched by her majesty, upon the recommendation of the celebrated physician Sir John Floyer, of Lichfield. King George I. put an end to this practice, which is said to have originated with Edward the Confessor, in 1058. 615 The custom was also observed by French kings; and on Easter Sunday, 1686, Louis XIV. is said to have touched 1600 persons. Lethargy. This is frequently confounded by medical men of former times, and by Shakespeare himself, with apoplexy. The term occurs in the list of diseases quoted by Thersites in Troilus and Cressida (v. 1). 616 Leprosy. This was, in years gone by, used to denote the lues venerea, as in Antony and Cleopatra (iii. 8): Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt, - 281 Whom leprosy o'ertake! Hoists sails and flies. Leech. The old medical term for a leech is a blood-sucker, and a knot would be an appropriate term for a number of clustering leeches. So, in Richard III. (iii. 3), Grey, being led to the block, says of Richard's minions: A knot you are of damned blood-suckers. In 2 Henry VI. (iii. 2) mention is made by Warwick of the blood-sucker of sleeping men, which, says Dr. Bucknill, appears to mean the vampire-bat. Measles. This word originally signified leprosy, although in modern times used for a very different disorder. Its derivation is the old French word meseau, or mesel, a leper. Thus, Cotgrave has Meseau, a meselled, scurvy, leaporous, lazarous person. Distempered or scurvied hogs are still said to be measled. It is in this sense that it is used in Coriolanus (iii. 1): As...