The medicinal value of the Epsom springs was discovered, it is
believed, towards the end of the sixteenth century, in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth. According to a local tradition the particular spring
which became so famous was not used for any purpose until one very
dry summer, when the farmer on whose land it existed bethought him to
dig the ground round about the spring, so as to make a pond for his
cattle to drink from. Having done this he found that the animals would
not touch the water, and on tasting it himself he appreciated their
objection to it. The peculiar merits of the water becoming known,
certain London physicians sent patients to Epsom to drink it, and it
proved especially useful in the cases of some who suffered with old
ulcers. Apparently the sores were washed with it. The name of the
farmer who contributed this important item to medical history was Henry
Wicker or Wickes.
In 1621 the owner of the estate where the spring had been found walled
in the well, and erected a shed for the convenience of the sick
visitors, who were then resorting to Epsom in increasing numbers.
By 1640 the Epsom Spa had become famous. The third Lord North, who
published a book called the Forest of Varieties in 1645, claimed to
have been the first to have made known the virtues of both the Epsom
and the Tonbridge waters to the King’s sick subjects, “the journey to
the German Spa being too expensive and inconvenient to sick persons,
and great sums of money being thereby carried out of the kingdom.”
After the Restoration Epsom became a fashionable watering-place. Before
1700 a ball-room had been built, and a promenade laid out; a number of
new inns and boarding-houses had been opened; sedan-chairs and hackney
coaches crowded the streets; and sports and play of all kinds were
provided. Pepys mentions visits to Epsom more than once in his Diary,
and Charles II and some of his favourites were there occasionally. The
town reached its zenith of gaiety in the reign of Queen Anne, who with
her husband, Prince George of Denmark, frequently drove from Windsor to
Epsom to drink the waters.
An apothecary living at Epsom in those times, and who had prospered
abundantly from the influx of visitors, is alleged to have done much to
check the hopeful prospects of the Surrey village. Much wanted more,
and Mr. Levingstern, the practitioner referred to, thought he saw his
way to a large fortune. He found another spring about half a mile from
the Old Wells, bought the land on which it was situated, built on it a
large assembly room for music, dancing, and gambling, and provided a
multitude of attractions, including games, fashion shops, and other
luxuries. At first he drew the crowds away from the Old Wells. But his
Epsom water did not give satisfaction. For some reason it brought the
remedial fame of the springs generally into disrepute. Then Levingstern
bought the lease of the Old Wells, and, unwisely it may be thought,
shut them up altogether. The glory of Epsom had departed, and though
several efforts were made subsequently to tempt society back to it,
they were invariably unsuccessful. The building at the Old Wells was
pulled down in 1802, and a private house built on the site. This house
is called The Wells, and the original well is still to be seen in the
garden. The very site of Mr. Levingstern’s “New Wells” is now doubtful.
He died in 1827.
In 1695 Nehemiah Grew, physician, and secretary of the Royal Society,
wrote a treatise “On the Bitter Cathartic Salt in the Epsom Water.”
Dr. Grew names 1620 as about the date when the medicinal spring was
discovered at Epsom by a countryman, and he says that for about ten
years the countrypeople only used it to wash external ulcers. He
relates that it was Lord Dudley North, who apparently lived near by,
who first began to take it as a medicine. He had been in the habit
of visiting the German spas, as he “laboured under a melancholy
disposition.” He used it, we are told, with abundant success, and
regarded it as a medicine sent from heaven. Among those whom he induced
to take the Epsom waters were Maria de Medicis, the mother of the wife
of Charles I, Lord Goring, the Earl of Norwich, and many other persons
of quality. These having shown the way, the physicians of London began
to recommend the waters, and then, Dr. Grew tells us, the place got
crowded, as many as 2,000 persons having taken the water in a single
day.
[Illustration: DR. NEHEMIAH GREW.
Born, 1628; died, 1711.
(From an engraving by R. White, from life.)
Dr. Grew was for many years secretary of the Royal Society and
editor of the _Philosophical Transactions_. He was one of the
pioneers of the science of structural botany and author of
_The Anatomy of Plants_.
]
It was Dr. Grew who first extracted the salt from the Epsom water, and
his treatise deals principally with that. He describes the effect of
adding all sorts of chemicals, oil of vitriol, salt of tartar, nitre,
galls, syrup of violets, and other substances to the solution; explains
how it differs from the sal mirabilis (sulphate of soda); and writes of
its delicate bitter taste as if he were commenting on a new wine. It
most resembles the crystals of silver, he says, in the similitude of
taste.
As to the medicinal value of this salt Dr. Grew says it is free from
the malignant quality of most cathartics, never violently agitates the
humours, nor causes sickness, faintings, or pains in the bowels. He
recommends it for digestive disorders, heartburn, loss of appetite,
and colic; in hypochondriacal distemper, in stone, diabetes, jaundice,
vertigo, and (to quote the English translation) “in wandering gout,
vulgarly but erroneously called the rheumatism.” It will exterminate
worms in children in doses of 1½ to 2 drachms, if given after 1, 2, or
3 grains of mercurius dulcis, according to age. Epsom salts were not to
be given in dropsy, intermittent fevers, chlorosis, blood-spitting, to
paralytics, or to women with child.
“I generally prescribe,” writes the doctor, “one, two, or three pints
of water, aromatised with a little mace, to which I add ½ oz. or 1 oz.,
or a greater dose of the salt.” He gives a specimen prescription which
orders 1 oz. or 10 drachms of the salt in 2 quarts of spring water,
with 1 drachm of mace. This dose (2 quarts, remember) was to be taken
in the morning in the course of two hours, generally warm, and taking
a little exercise meanwhile. This was what was called an apozem. You
might add to the apozem, if thought desirable, 3 drachms of senna and
1½ oz. or 2 oz. of flaky manna.
Mr. Francis Moult, Chymist, at the sign of the Glauber’s Head, Watling
Street, London, translated Dr. Grew’s treatise into English, and gave
a copy to buyers of the Bitter Purging Salts. Probably he was the
“furnace philosopher” referred to by Quincy (see below), though it is
difficult to see what there was to object to in his action.
George and Francis Moult (the latter was, no doubt, the chymist who
kept the shop in Watling Street) in about the year 1700 found a more
abundant supply of the popular salt in a spring at Shooter’s Hill,
where it is recorded they boiled down as much as 200 barrels of the
water in a week, obtaining some 2 cwt. of salt from these. Some time
after, a Dr. Hoy discovered a new method of producing an artificial
salt which corresponded in all respects with the cathartic salts
obtained from Epsom water, and which by reason of the price soon drove
the latter out of the market, and caused the Shooter’s Hill works to
be closed. It was known that Hoy’s salt was made from sea water, and
at first it was alleged to be the sal mirabilis of Glauber, sulphate
of soda. But this was disproved, and experiments were carried on at
the salt works belonging to Lady Carrington at Portsmouth, and later
at Lymington, where the manufacture settled for many years, the source
being the residue after salt had been made, called the bittern--salts
of magnesium, in fact. This was the principal source of supply, though
it was made in many places and under various patents until in 1816 Dr.
Henry, of Manchester, took out a patent for the production of sulphate
of magnesia from dolomite.
It should be mentioned that it was by the examination of Epsom salts
that Black was led to his epoch-making discovery of the distinction
between the alkaline earths, and also of fixed air, in 1754.
In Quincy’s “Dispensatory” (1724), medicinal waters like those of Epsom
are described as Aquæ Aluminosæ. It is stated that there are many
in England, scarce a county without them. The principal ones about
London are at Epsom, Acton, Dulwich, and North-hall. They all “abound
with a salt of an aluminous and nitrous nature,” and “greatly deterge
the stomach and bowels.” But it is easy to take them too frequently,
so that “the salts will too much get into the blood, which by their
grossness will gradually be collected in the capillaries and glands to
obstruct them and occasion fevers.” After some more advice Quincy adds--
“It is difficult to pass this article without setting a mark
upon that abominable cheat which is now sold by the name
of Epsom waters. Dr. Grew, who was a most worthy physician
and an industrious experimenter, made trial how much salt
these waters would leave upon evaporation, and found that a
gallon left about two drams, or near, according to my best
remembrance, for I have not his writings by me. He likewise
found the salt thus procured answered the virtues of the water
in its cathartic qualities. Of this an account was given
before the Royal Society in a Latin dissertation. But the
avaricious craft of a certain furnace-philosopher could not
let this useful discovery in natural knowledge rest under the
improvement and proper use of persons of integrity; but he
pretended to make a great quantity for sale; and to recommend
his salt translated the Doctor’s Lecture into English to give
away as a quack-bill.”
Quincy proceeds to tell us how other competitors came in, and how
the price was so reduced that what was first sold at one shilling an
ounce, and could not honestly be made under (Quincy apparently refers
to the salt made by evaporation), came down in a short time to thirty
shillings per hundredweight.