MINERAL WATERS AND MEDICINAL SPRINGS OF ESSEX. 221
" is as clear as any spring water, but not altogether so white, it having
a little cast upon the straw colour. It has a pleasant taste and affects the tongue
with a kind of fulness, not unlike as if a small quantity of milk was mixt with the
water ; and none but a very nice taste can discover any saline taste in it. The
mineral particles are so well mixed and united with it that no sediment is to be
perceived at the bottom of the bottles after several months keeping ; and Mr.
Kellaway had some by him in a cask 14 or 15 months ; at the end of which time,
it was found perfectly fine, boiled white, See., and seemed as efficacious as when
first pump'd from the spring ; but it tasted a little of the cask and look'd of a
deeper colour, . ; for which reason, it ought to be kept in bottles only.
. . . For the encouragement of sea-faring persons, I will add . . . that
some of it has been carry'd to the East & West Indies, and back again, and kept
fine the whole voyage."
In the next place, Dr. Andree dilates at length on the virtues
of the water, which, he says,90 he had found valuable in many
different kinds of illnesses. Thus he says that, in "obstinate
loosenesses, though I have prescrib'd it to many persons in this
case, I have never yet found it to fail." It is clear, indeed, that,
even thus early, the water had become well known. It had been
already advertised publicly for sale in London.91
Finally, at the end of his pamphlet, Dr. Andree inserts the
signed statements of five persons, who testify that they had been
completely cured of various diseases, entirely through drinking
this water and after other remedies had failed to cure them.92
By the time of the issue of Andree's second edition, in 1740,
the fame of the Tilbury Water had increased greatly, and he
speaks with still greater confidence of its curative value. It
had
" been found [he says93] to cure, like a specifick, the diarrhaea, dysentery, the
bleeding of the piles, and immoderate fluxes of the menses ; and is of great ser-
vice in the fluor albus and seminal weaknesses. ... It likewise relieves the
gravel and stone, the asthma, and complaints from the gout, as well as disorders
of the bowels and scorbutick ailments."
After further discourse thereon, he continues94:—
" The water has at present so great a reputation for curing diarrhaeas among
the publick that it would be looked upon in me impertinent to swell this treatise
with cures of that kind. ... I have ordered it to persons of all ages, even to
very young children, when troubled with watery (or what they call more properly
bilious) griping stools ; to women in child-bed ; in intermittent, nervous, hectick,
90 Op. cit., first ed., pp. 22-30 (1737).
91 In the Daily Advertiser (and, probably, in other papers).
92 Op. cit., first ed., pp. 31-38 (1737). These "cases," with two more added, appear also in
the second (pp. 35-40) and later editions. One of the testimonials states that the writer had
been led to visit the well and drink the water through hearing of its fame when in Scotland.
93 Op. cit., second ed., p. 23 (1740).
94 Op. cit., second ed., pp. 24-25 (1740).