"The King's Evil"

The King's Evil (scrofula)

It was believed that the king's or queen's touch could heal this form of tuberculosis, and thus it is called "the King's Evil." It is TB of the neck lymph glands and was transmitted from infected cows via their milk (Waller, 100).
The left picture shows England's Edward the Confessor (ruled 1042-66) touching to heal scrofula, and the right one shows Charles II (1660-1685) doing the same (Source: Wellcome Library).
In the Church of England, the only one legitimately allowed to perform healing miracles within the Church was the king or queen (Webster, Robert.  "Balsamic Virtue: Healing Imagery in Charles Wesley" in Newport, Kenneth and Campbell, Ted (eds).  Charles Wesley: Life, Literature and Legacy (Peterborough, UK: Epworth Press, 2007), 229-244).

In Primitive Physick, John Wesley made different recommendations for "The King's Evil" and "consumption," another word for tuberculosis. He described "The King's Evil" by noting, "It commonly appears first, by the thickness of the lips; or a stubborn humour in the eyse; then some hard swellings in the neck chiefly: then running sores." (Wesley, John. Primitive Physic: Or An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases, 14th ed. (Bristol: William Pine, 1770,) reprinted Bristol: The New Room, 3rd ed., 2007.) Health caregivers in the 18th century did not recognize varieties of how tuberculosis appears (Madden, Inward and Outward Health, 103). The forms of TB were not identified as a single disease until 1820 and the cause was not discovered until 1882. We'll discuss more about TB later.
Wesley's remedies:
444.  Take as much cream of tartar as lies on a six-pence, every morning and evening;
445.  Or, drink for six weeks half a pint of a strong decoction of devil's bit: tried.
446.  Or, use the diet drink, as in the article scorbutic sores.  I have knows this cure one whose breat was as full of holes as a honey-comb.
447.  Or, set a quart of honey by the fire to melt.  When it is cold, strew into it a pound and a half of quick-lime beat very fine, and sifted through a hair-sieve.  Stir this about, till it boil up of itself into a hard lump.  Beat it when cold, very fine, and sift it as before.  Take of this as much as lies on a shilling in a glass of water, every morning, an hour before breakfast, at four in the afternoon, and at going to bed:
448.  Or, make a leaf of dried burdock into a pint of tea.  Talk half a pint twice a day, for four months.  I have know this [to] cure hundreds.
449.  The best purge for the King's Evil is Tincture of jalap, which is made thus: -- jalap in powder, two ounces;  Geneva, or proof spiritus, one pint.  Let them infuse seven days.  A teaspoonful or two is sufficient for a child ten years old, in a morning fasting; and repeated once or twice a week, so as to keep the stomach and bowels clean, will frequently cure the King's Evil.  But all violent purges, when repeated too often, are pernicious.*
* The Tincture of jalap must be taken in any agreeable liquid." (Wesley, Physic, 76.)

John Wesley in stained glass (The New Room Museum, Bristol, viewed 11 October 2012).