‘That here persons may draw in a pure and balmy air, with the heavens clear and serene, at that season of the year that the great and populous City of London is covered with fogs and smoke. And what adds,’ observes the doctor, ‘to the blessings of the place is the salubrious water of Hampstead, which may be justly called the Fountain of Health.’ He describes the chalybeate as breaking out from the declivity of the hill, to the east of the town, near the chapel and bowling-green, and tells us that it was conveyed through a pipe to a marble perforated bowl or reservoir adjoining the chapel. Dr. Soames, as his predecessor had done, notices the views from the Heath, its soils, and the number of aromatic plants growing on it, and adds that the Apothecaries’ Company seldom miss coming to Hampstead every spring to have their botanizing feast.[253] ‘As for walks and shady groves,’ he continues, ‘we have our share, and those are very delightful.’ But his praises of the spring which trickled till within the last few years into its basin on the left-hand side of the walk on entering it from the Heath, and his regimen for the water-drinkers, are the most amusing part of his treatise. He assures his readers that ‘the chalybeate, though as strong, if not stronger, than that of Tunbridge Wells of the iron mineral, is not at all unpleasant; that if well corked and sealed down, and kept in a cellar for one or two years, when you have drawn the cork it will be most ready to fly, and when poured into a glass, will sparkle and knit up like a glass of champagne or Herefordshire cider.’ He recommends the drinking of this water in cases of defective digestion, in preference to the drinking of drams (a thing too common in his day), which he hopes ‘may not spread its contagion beyond his own sex.’ At the same time he greatly hopes that the inordinate drinking of _thea_ may be retrenched, which, if continued in, will infallibly ‘cause the next generation to be more like pigmies than men and women.’[254] The best time to take the waters is from June to Michaelmas; the time of day an hour after sunrise (no wonder music began in the Long Room at 6 a.m.). He allows his patients balm, or sage tea, with a little orange-peel in it for breakfast; or chocolate, milk, porridge, or mutton-broth, with bread-and-butter. An hour after taking the water, coffee may be used—the less the better—but as for the green or bohea _thea_, that ‘ought to be banished.’