"Cures without care" "chymical physicians" and mineral waters in seventeenth-century English medicine.

AFrER A LONG period of decline during the Middle Ages, interest in the healing properties of mineral waters revived in England in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. The warm springs at Bath and Buxton were already regaining their popularity for bathing by 1570, especially for rheumatism, gout, and skin diseases.2 The baths were also considered to increase fertility, but the drinking of mineral waters for medicinal purposes was not then common and only slowly gained ground. Traditional medicine was generally opposed to the use of these waters, especially for drinking * . which is very adventurously and most dangerously practised against both reason and all authority."8 However, as it became known that they were sometimes effective against gravel and bladder stone as well as gout, the search for new springs was intensified and the vogue for spa treatments developed. For the physician, the existence of a mineral spring in his locality could be a most lucrative aid to his medical practice. The earliest known work to discuss in English the curative properties of mineral waters and so make the information more widely available was published in 1562,' but from then on works on the medicinal virtues of these springs began to appear in increasing numbers as mineral water treatments were more frequently recommended by English physicians. In such books a topographical account of the position of each spring with reference to the surrounding countryside and especially the nature of rock formations nearby, would be followed by a description of the *Noel G. Coley, M.Sc., PhD., Staff Tutor in History of Science, The Open University, South East Region, 230-232 London Road, East Grinstead, Sussex RH19 1LA.