CHAPTER XIV. QUACKS AND IMPOSTORS.

seven planets, seven metals, seven sisters, seven stars, seven wonders of the world—all have had their day of favour; albeit that the number has been awkwardly interfered with by modern discoveries concerning metals, planets, stars, and wonders of the world. Added to the above list is the group of seven sons, especially in relation to the youngest or seventh of the seven; and more especially still if this person happen to be the seventh son of a seventh son. It is now perhaps impossible to discover in what country, or at what time, the notion originated, but a notion there certainly is, chiefly in provincial districts, that a seventh son has something peculiar about him. For the most part, the imputed peculiarity is a healing power, a faculty of curing diseases by the touch, or by some other means. The instances of this belief are numerous enough. There is a rare pamphlet called ‘The Quack Doctor’s Speech,’ published in the time of Charles II. The reckless Earl of Rochester delivered this speech on one occasion, when dressed in character, and mounted on a stage as a charlatan. The speech, amid much that suited that licentious age, but would be frowned down by modern society, contained an enumeration of the doctor’s wonderful qualities, among which was that of being a ‘seventh son of a seventh son,’ and therefore clever as a curer of bodily ills. The matter is only mentioned as affording a sort of proof of the existence of a sort of popular belief. In Cornwall, the peasants and the miners entertain this notion; they believe that a seventh son can cure the king’s evil by the touch. The mode of proceeding usually is to stroke the part affected thrice gently, to blow upon it thrice, to repeat a form of words, and to give a perforated coin, or some other object, to be worn as an amulet. At Bristol, about forty years ago, there was a man who was always called ‘doctor’ simply because he was the seventh son of a seventh son. The family of the Joneses of Muddfi, in Wales, is said to have presented seven sons to each of many successive generations, of whom the seventh son always became a doctor—apparently from a conviction that he had an inherited qualification to start with. In Ireland, the seventh son of a