A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court by Mark Twain Chapter 26 Page 11

Camelot for years on crutches, arrive and pray before that picture, and put down their crutches and walk off without a limp. There were piles of crutches there which had been left by such people as a testimony.

In other places people operated on a patient’s mind, without saying a word to him, and cured him. In others, experts assembled patients in a room and prayed over them, and appealed to their faith, and those patients went away cured. Wherever you find a king who can’t cure the king’s-evil you can be sure that the most valuable superstition that supports his throne — the subject’s belief in the divine appointment of his sovereign — has passed away.

In my youth the monarchs of England had ceased to touch for the evil, but there was no occasion for