Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: King’s Evil

  • Touching for the King’s Evil

    JMS PearceHull, England The old word scrofula is now seldom seen in medical writings. Nor are the words ague, buboe, and podagra. Despite their romantic, descriptive appeal, they have been swept aside by the jet stream of the current epidemic of maladroit, often high-tech words, phrases, acronyms, and initialisms. Scrofula, the “King’s Evil,” or “struma,”…

  • Doctor Johnson and his ailments

    Samuel Johnson, one of the greatest English literary figures of all time, is remembered more for what he said than for what he wrote. Other writers may have been more successful or more profound, but none had as great a biographer as James Boswell.1 Boswell was twenty-two years old when he was first introduced to…