10 Bizarre Things We Used To Believe

To believe in royal touch one must also believe in the divine right of royalty. This principle holds that certain individuals are ordained by God himself to lead the masses.

Divine right does tend to favour rich landowners as well; that's probably a coincidence.

One of the super powers credited to royals, beyond the whole selected by God thing, is the ability to heal the sick via touch. The practice was mostly popular in England and France, with Edward the Confessor being the probable trendsetter in the former.

Usually the magic touch was given to the poor (it's almost always the poor) suffering with tuberculosis, which would cause scrofula. The disease manifests as large lesions on the face and neck due to the infection in the lymph nodes.

The royal would stroke the lesion (gross) and the disease would miraculously be cured weeks later. Coincidently scrofula is now known to more or less clear up weeks after first manifesting on its own, with or without the regal stroke.

The belief fell out of practice mostly in the 1800s due to scientific study and, at least in France, the dissolving of attitudes towards royalty.