page_title: Edmund Deane
section_title: Spadacrene Anglica (1626)
hierarchical_section_title: Edmund Deane / Spadacrene Anglica (1626)
caption_attribution_description: English: Tewit Well The Tewit Well supplied chalybeate water for visitors to the spa town for two centuries and more. It saw fewer visitors than the wells in Low Harrogate or St John's Well in High Harrogate due to its distance from hotels and lodging houses. 'Tewit' is a local word for peewit or lapwing, these birds once being common on the Stray.
context_page_description: Edmund Deane was an English physician and author. He is known for a significant work on the chemistry of mineral springs, and as an editor of alchemical tracts.
context_section_description: Deane published: Spadacrene Anglica, or the English Spa Fountain (1626). This work on the spring waters at Harrogate was connected with Deane's relatively short acquaintance with Timothie Bright (Bright died in 1615, Deane moved back to York in 1614). The local spring waters were sulphurous, and were recommended by a number of medical men: Bright, Deane, then Michael Stanhope, and John French.
  The development of the Tewit Well by William Slingsby (died 1608) from 1571 had led to a wish to promote the "English Spaw" as Bright, rector of Barwick-in-Elmet and Methley, named it in the mid-1590s. Yorkshire gentry favoured the idea, and in 1625 Deane and Stanhope visited the well, cleaned it out, and took samples. Deane put the argument that taking the waters in England was safer than travel to continental Europe to do so.
  Chemical testing of the waters was described in Spadacrene Anglica, and Stanhope's later work, based in particular on the "gall test" going back to Conrad Gesner. These are early mentions of this chemical indicator in the English literature: Gesner's ideas had been translated by Thomas Hill in his Newe Jewell of 1576, but little intervening interest was shown. The tradition of chemical analysis was continued by French and Robert Witty (1660), and was praised by Samuel Hartlib.
  Deane mentioned four other wells around Harrogate. He also showed he was aware of the popular St Mungo's Well at Copgrove, and St Robert's Well at Knaresborough. Stanhope in his 1626 work Newes out of Yorkshire described Harrogate waters, and in 1631 he discovered another spring there, which became known as St John's Well.
caption: The Tewit Well, Harrogate, today
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