Word: scrofula
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...fact, still has the title Defender of the Faith, an honor given to Henry VIII before he broke with the Catholic Church and established the Church of England.) That touch of holiness once gave the occupant of the throne the supposed ability to cure certain diseases - most famously, scrofula, a terrible skin ailment that was called "the king's evil." Thus, the miraculous contact had to be conserved. And so, whether a touch or a nod or a gaze, royal favor, like that of God, is not a subject's on demand; it is dispensed by kingly prerogative. (See pictures...
Illness and disease remained in constant residence. Tuberculosis was endemic, and so were scabrous skin diseases of every kind: abscesses, cankers, scrofula, tumors, eczema and erysipelas. In a throwback to biblical times, lepers constituted a class of pariahs living on the outskirts of villages and cities. Constant famine, rotten flour and vitamin deficiencies afflicted huge segments of society with blindness, goiter, paralysis and bone malformations that created hunchbacks and cripples. A man was lucky to survive 30, and 50 was a ripe old age. Most women, many of them succumbing to the ravages of childbirth, lived less than 30 years...
...with Feaver and Ague) which turns to the bloudy-flux, a common disease in the Countrey, which together with the small pox hath carried away abundance of their children." This same Josselyn attributed to the Indians "the great pox" (syphilis), consumption of the lungs, the King's Evil (scrofula) and falling sickness-all of which happened to be imports from the Old World...
...Scurvy, scrofula and scabies were common among the poor. Bathing was rare: one Quaker lady noted in her diary in 1799 that she withstood a shower bath "better than I expected, not having been wett all over at once, for 28 years past." Body lice were omnipresent, as was the disease they carried-typhus fever. Frequent births and poor obstetrics accounted for the high mortality in mothers; the death rate among black women served by midwives was lower than among whites served by physicians. Mental illness was seen as the work of the devil: the village idiot was either derided...
Tupou IV is supposed to be descended from the mythical sky god Tangaroa, but Tongans no longer believe their King can magically heal scrofula or liver disease with a mere touch of his foot...