Images

Henry IV of France (r. 1572-1610) touching 575 people in Reims during the Holy Week of 1606, due to the prevailing belief that the royal touch could cure illness.

Photograph of scrofula of the neck, from Byrom Bramwell's Atlas of Clinical Medicine, 1893.

A Mamluk chanfron, designed to protect the face and head of a warhorse. Hammered iron and gold decorations. Made in Egypt or Syria, c. 1419 CE. Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon.

Pilgrims Going to Church, oil on canvas painting by George Henry Boughton, 1867. New-York Historical Society.

Portrait of George Whitefield by John Wollaston the Younger, c. 1742. National Portrait Gallery, London.

Steep Falls, Saco River, Maine. One of the best-known "Indian Curses" is the curse of the Saco River in modern-day Maine. According to one version of the legend, a native chief named Squandro lost his infant son (and in some versions...

Ending of the Apocryphon of John and the beginning of the Gospel of Thomas, Nag Hammadi Codex II, folio 32, 4th century CE.

An Attic lip cup decorated with hens and cockerels. From Corinth. 560-550 BCE. (National Archaeological Museum, Athens)

A depiction of a Greek Corinthian helmet with myrtle leaves. From an Attic black-figure pottery vessel from Phalero, 575-550 BCE. (National Archaeological Museum, Athens)

A copper-alloy figurine group showing Hercules wrestling the Libyan giant Antaeus. From Alexandria. 2nd-1st century BCE. (National Archaeological Museum, Athens)