# Aragorn the Healer



## Idril (Mar 9, 2003)

This has been bothering me since I first read LotRs. Aragorn was able to heal Faramir after his injury from the Southron's arrow and the Black Breath, Eowyn with her arm and even Merry, but was unable to heal Frodo with his injury from the Morgul blade, insisting only Elrond had the ability/power. 

"Thus spake Ioreth, wise-woman of gondor: The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known".

Aragorn himself says he is Envinyatar, the renewer.

Has his healing powers changed/increased between the begining of the book and the end and if it has when and why?


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## Niniel (Mar 9, 2003)

Maybe his healing powers had something to do with his self-confidence and of how sure he was of becoming king. In te beginning he had no idea that he would be king within a short time, and maybe his healing powers only worked when he was more sure of himself and that he was really becoming king. In the end he had proven himself to be worthy to be king, in the beginning that was not so sure. Him being the rightful king did not only depend on his lineage but also on the fact that he had to prove himself strong enough (in body and mind) and only after the War of the Ring it was beyond doubt that he was the only rightful king.


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## Celebthôl (Mar 9, 2003)

well lets look at this, did any of the people he DID cure have a stab from a Morgul blade?! no, was there a fragment of Morgul blade in the people he cured?! no, it was only poison or some sort of magical type thingy, not a physical shard of a blade working itself into their body.
Onlt Elrond could cure Frodo as he was around when the Ringwraiths were at large and this type of injury was more common and needed to be cured more often, Aragorn was never around when this injury was common...

Thôl


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## Idril (Mar 9, 2003)

Good points Celebthôl. 

It just seems that his abilities and confidence as a healer increases dramatically by the end of the book - just before he claims his throne needless to say, thus fulfilling Ioreth's saying "The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known".


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## Húrin Thalion (Mar 9, 2003)

May I remind you of the elfstone, Elessar? It had great healing powers as was displayed in the mouths of Sirion. Preserved adn healed. That is why Galadriel wanted it from Gandalf. It was wrought in Gondolin and was like to the light of sun through the leaves. 

Húrin Thalion


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## Celebithil (Mar 9, 2003)

I think it could be a combination of both that his confidence did increase and no one else had been stabbed by a morgul blade. By its very name a sorcerous blade that would probably be quite hard to heal.


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## FrankSinatra (Mar 9, 2003)

*Yes*

I dont think there is anything magical involved.

But then again, the healing of Faramir, Merry and Eowyn seems to be like that.

Athelas was his speciality.


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## jallan (Mar 9, 2003)

The motif of king as healer is an old one which Tolkien here adopts.

From George Fraser in _The Golden Bough_ (Project Gutenberg Edition of _The Golden Bough: A Case Study in Magic and Religion_ (abridged edition, 1922) about the powers attributed to rightful kings including that of healing:


> Perhaps the last relic of such superstitions which lingered about our English kings was the notion that they could heal scrofula by their touch. The disease was accordingly known as the King’s Evil. Queen Elizabeth often exercised this miraculous gift of healing. On Midsummer Day 1633, Charles the First cured a hundred patients at one swoop in the chapel royal at Holyrood. But it was under his son Charles the Second that the practice seems to have attained its highest vogue. It is said that in the course of his reign Charles the Second touched near a hundred thousand persons for scrofula. The press to get near him was sometimes terrific. On one occasion six or seven of those who came to be healed were trampled to death. The cool-headed William the Third contemptuously refused to lend himself to the hocuspocus; and when his palace was besieged by the usual unsavoury crowd, he ordered them to be turned away with a dole. On the only occasion when he was importuned into laying his hand on a patient, he said to him, God give you better health and more sense. However, the practice was continued, as might have been expected, by the dull bigot James the Second and his dull daughter Queen Anne.
> 
> The kings of France also claimed to possess the same gift of healing by touch, which they are said to have derived from Clovis or from St. Louis, while our English kings inherited it from Edward the Confessor. Similarly the savage chiefs of Tonga were believed to heal scrofula and cases of indurated liver by the touch of their feet; and the cure was strictly homoeopathic, for the disease as well as the cure was thought to be caused by contact with the royal person or with anything that belonged to it.


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## Idril (Mar 10, 2003)

Guess this power would be down to 'Divine Rule'.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts - anymore ideas, very welcomed


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