Note 1313 — Chapter VI · MAGICIANS AS KINGS
Reading edition
A Roman name for jaundice was “the royal disease” (morbus regius). See Horace, Ars poetica, 453; Celsus, De medicina, iii. 24. Can this have been because the malady was believed to be caused and cured by kings? Did the sight or touch of the king’s red or purple robe ban the yellow tinge from the skin of the sufferer? As to such homoeopathic cures of jaundice, see above, pp. 79 sqq.