Epsom Salts.
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.
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.