The touch of scrofula: medicine, thaumaturgy and the kings guards during the grand century

The great book wrote by Marc Bloch has not much insisted on the royal touch during the seventeenth century. Many documents inform us about the place of the physicians in the ceremonial. After sorting the sick out, they maintain their head during the touch. On account of the number of the scrofulous, the physicians had to warrant the good course of the ritual from a sanitary point of view. Also, the kings washed theirs hands after the touch. In the seventeenth century, we witness a "medicalisation" of the king touch: medicines are on the increase, the kings overstrain themselves when the formulas become confused in a complete indifference. Yet, the decline of the touch is not totally linked with the flight of a whole medical vision of scrofula. The two phenomena are contemporaneous but not necessarily connected.