Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Stephanie Maschek and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's Note: A carat is used in some instances to indicate superscript. If part is in brackets, then only those letters in brackets are superscripted and the rest of the word is the normal size. SPADACRENE ANGLICA. OR, _The English Spa Fountain._ BY EDMUND DEANE, M.D. OXON. The First Work on the Waters of Harrogate. _REPRINTED WITH INTRODUCTION_ BY JAMES RUTHERFORD, L.R.C.P. ED. _AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES_ BY ALEX. BUTLER, M.B. BRISTOL: JOHN WRIGHT & SONS LTD. LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. LTD. 1922 INTRODUCTION. If the Author of "Spadacrene Anglica" could see our modern Harrogate, for whose existence he is to no small extent responsible, he would be justly entitled to consider his labours as well spent, however surprised he might be at the change that had taken place in the village as he knew it in the year 1626. For so was Harrogate in those years, a small scattered hamlet, part of that great Royal Forest of Knaresborough, extending westward from the town of Knaresborough for about 20 miles towards Bolton Abbey, with an average depth of about 8 miles from North to South, a Royal Forest, as Grainge in his History thereof premises, from the year 1130 until 1775. Not only the change in the physical aspect of Harrogate would have been noted by our author. Since his days, within a radius of a few miles, have been found over 80 mineral springs, whereby Harrogate is distinguished from all other European health resorts. Not that the curative powers of these waters were altogether unknown before Edmund Deane extolled the merits of the Tuewhit Well in "Spadacrene Anglica." Indeed, he would be a bold man who would dogmatically lay down at what period the powers of these waters were unknown. Thus, in mediæval times the waters of St. Mungo's and St. Robert's were accredited with miraculous powers. The Tuewhit Well itself derives its name, according to some authorities, from its association in pre-Roman times with the pagan God Teut. "Spadacrene Anglica" was published by Dr. Edmund Deane, an eminent physician of York, in the year 1626, and passed through three editions after his death. All these editions are very scarce, and although there are copies of the four editions in the British Museum, there are only two other copies known to exist. I was indeed fortunate, therefore, when some seventeen years ago I picked up a copy in a well-known second-hand book shop in Harrogate. Now I am reprinting it, not so much for its interest to my professional brethren as a quaint and learned contribution to medical literature in the seventeenth century, but because it is the earliest and most indispensable source of the history of the waters of Harrogate.