For centuries the kings and queens of England and France claimed they could cure the King’s Evil, scrofula, a form of tuberculosis that swells the lymph nodes of the neck into disfiguring abscesses, simply by touching the sufferer. This episode explains why the claim held up: scrofula was rarely fatal and often went into remission on its own, so the monarch took credit for the immune system’s work. Henry VII turned the English ceremony into a formal sacrament with readings from Mark and John, and each patient received a gold coin called an angel, worth six shillings and eight pence, to be worn at all times for the cure to work.

England traced the gift to Edward the Confessor, while France claimed it for its own kings, and the French court put Spanish visitors at the front of the line. After converting to Catholicism, Henry IV of France staged a mass touching on Easter Sunday in 1594, declaring the king touches you, God cures you. Charles II touched more than 92,000 people. William III mocked the rite, Voltaire ridiculed it, and George I abandoned it in 1714 as inoculation reached England.

• The Catholic League’s warning that God would never let a Protestant king heal the sick
• Henry IV touching more than 1,250 people in a single day by 1608
• Ceremonies limited to the cold months between Michaelmas and Easter, which cut the risk to the king from crowds of the sick
• When angel coins stopped being made in the 1630s, the crown struck special gold medals for the ritual
• By 1722 the French formula softened to the king touches you, may God heal you