An Account of a Book

IX. An Account of a BOOK. The Natural History of the Chalybeat and Purging Waters of England, with their particular Essays and Uses, &c. with Observations on the Bath Waters in Somersetshire. By Benj. Allen, Med. Bac. Printed for S. Smith and B. Walford, at the Prince's Arms in St. Paul's Church-yard. 1699. This Treatise consists of an Account of the Original and Principles of the Chalybeat and Purging Waters of England, the Essays of the Particular Waters, and a Register of the Virtues and Properties of them. This the Author Recommends as a Work never yet done; from the Necessity of knowing the Qualities and Properties, of any Subject, and nicely stating the Cases they are proper in, but especially of this Subject of so general Use and extraordinary Virtue; and urgeth the Discovery of so great variety in the Waters and their Salts, as amount to essential Differences among those reputed of the same species, and which are used promiscuously, this he proves to answer Observation; and to the neglect of which Proprieties, he proves the want of Success to be much owing, as well as to the ignorance of their proper Place, and full extent of their Virtues. In the Chalybeats he discovers chiefly Four sorts: forts; The Light, the Heavy Acid that takes only a Red with Gall, and does not retain it; the Atramentous, that retain considerably the Colour, and those that have so great a share of the Salt of the Earth, as hindered their retaining the Colour they take with Gall, to all which he Assigns distinct Virtues. Particularly, the Light Waters he appropriates to Obstructions of the more remote and finer Passages of the Glands, &c. and the Heavy Acid to the Astringing and stopping Fluxes of Blood; in the Virtues of the last the Author considers the Apoplexy distinctly, which he makes to proceed from a Vice of the Glandular Duets, and not from any Obstruction in the Blood-Vessels; evincing, as he thinks, that no Obstruction of them, or of the Brain, nor compression of the Brain can effect it; and corrects the Notion of the continued Course of the Animal Spirits, to be the continuer or our Machine; but the spring of the Brain correspondent to and kept up by the Air, which he makes the use of Respiration, and which he argues to be destroyed in this Disease, by admission of Air with the Blood which breaks in, and that this Distemper is Cured by these Waters on that score; what concurs to the Production of this Disease (which is to be regarded) whence it becomes so frequent; this he makes to be cold received into the Cortex Cerebri, and affecting the Succus Nutritius, and mortifies it; that it is so, the History he gives of the Diseases of the Seasons, he thinks, sufficiently evince: First from a general Course of the Diseases of the last Years, in which he proves the Cause to be the same; and then chiefly, that upon the removing of the Matter from the Brain, it appears in rheumatick flatulent Tumors in the part where it settles, and which readily return to produce another fit: in all which he approves Dr. Coles use of the Glandular Secretion, and the the Cause, which he assigns to be Cold; only more nearly explains the reason and nature of it, the matter of which this Author supposeth to be more minute, than the common gross parts that affect us, and that the Great Frost did by no means introduce it, but helped to increase and urge it; and this complication of Causes he considers in the Cure. The Purging Waters he detects the Principles of, which hath been the Work of our greatest Men, and fruitless hitherto. And in the Essays of the Waters, observes so great variety of the Salts of them, and in the Nature of the Waters, in proportion to their differences: The Author in short, examines them, and offers their Essays to view; besides some of the Waters which he thus proves to be the same with the fam'd ones of Scarborow and Knaresborow; he offers some not known, and some not used at least before, which regards Diseases not Cured by the others. LONDON: Printed for Sam. Smith, and Benj. Walford, Printers to the Royal Society, at the Prince's Arms in St. Paul's Church-yard. 1699.