Spadacrene Anglica The English Spa Fountain   By: Edmund Deane (1582?-1640)

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.

A careful study of it will correct a number of remarkable errors, which now pass current as historical facts in connection with the rise into fame of Harrogate as our premier Spa. These errors would never have arisen had there been a more free access to this very scarce book. Most writers appear to have depended for their knowledge of its contents upon the summary of it contained in Dr. Thomas Short's "History of Mineral Waters," published about a century after the publication of "Spadacrene Anglica." In commenting on this and other works abridged in his History, the learned author states:

"Some of them are very scarce and rare. Therefore, such as have them not, have here their whole substance , and need not trouble themselves for the treatises." Unfortunately, they did not have their "whole substance," and hence these errors.