[EDNOTE.  I suggest knotting this thread, which is moving away from Nabokov studies.  -- SES.]

 

Carolyn Kunin writes, in two installments:

 

and I always thought it was Johnson who was crapulous! actually I should have
thought it was Dean Swift (also apropos of Pale Fire, no?) so and so who
wroteGulliver's Travels. Johnson was intemperate andscrofulous - something else
entirely. It was called the king's disease because it was believed that the
king's touch could cure it. As a wee lad, Samuel was taken to be touched by the
reigning monarch (probably a George), but it didn't take. A skin disease the
poor man suffered with all his life. Maybe what we call today echzema? Does
anybody know? (is there a doctor in the house?)

***

 

Wikied my own reply. Scrofula is actually a form of tuberculosis. Johnson was
touched by Queen Ann, and King George put an end to the practice:

Scrofula is the term used for lympadenopathy of the neck .... It can be caused
by tuberculous or non tuberculous mycobacteria. .... In the 20th century, with
the retreat of tuberculosis, scrofula became almost unheard of amongst children,
but AIDS brought a return of the disease in adults.

Scrofula of the neckQueen Anne touched the infant Samuel Johnson in
1712,[2] but King George I put an end to the practice as being
"too Catholic".[citation needed] The kings of France continued the custom
until Louis XV stopped it in the 18th century, though it was briefly revived to
universal derision in 1825.