Greatrakes (or Greatorex), Valentine (1629–1683)

Irish physician, who gained a reputation for curing the illness known as the ‘king's evil’ – scrofula – as well as a number of other diseases, by ‘touching’ the afflicted person.

Greatrakes was born in Affane, County Waterford, and served as an officer in the Parliamentary army in Ireland 1649–56. He first used his unorthodox method of healing, for which he never charged, in 1662. Although his ‘cure’ failed when he was presented to King Charles II at Whitehall in 1666, his contemporaries Robert Boyle, Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, and others testified to the efficacy of his technique. He replied to sceptics in his Brief Account 1666.