Note 1309 — Chapter VI · MAGICIANS AS KINGS

T. J. Pettigrew, Superstitions connected with the History and Practice of Medicine and Surgery (London, 1844), pp. 117–154; W. G. Black, Folk-Medicine (London, 1883), pp. 140 sqq.; W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1892), i. 84–90. Down to the end of the eighteenth century it was believed in the Highlands of Scotland that some tribes of Macdonalds had the power of curing a certain disease by their touch and the use of a particular set of words. Hence the disease, which attacked the chest and lungs, was called “the Macdonald’s disease.” We are told that the faith of the people in the touch of a Macdonald was very great. See Rev. Dr. Th. Bisset, “Parish of Logierait,” in Sir John Sinclair’s Statistical Account of Scotland, iii. (Edinburgh, 1792) p. 84.