HARROGATE, a village in the west riding of Yorkshire, in the parish of Knareborough, remarkable for its medicinal springs. These are three in number, all different in their qualities, notwithstanding their contiguity. 1. The Tewet water or Sweet Spa, a vitriolic spring of a sort of milky taste used in gravelly cases, was discovered by Mr Slingby in 1638. 2. The stinking or sulphur spring, useful in dropical, scorbatic, and gouty cases, rises in the town, and is received in four basins under four different buildings; at one it is drunk, at the others used for hot or cold baths. It is perfectly clear; but the taste and smell a composition of rotten eggs, sea-water, and sulphur, and extremely
VOL. X. Part I.
salt. Bathing is the most general method of using it. It is the strongest sulphur water in Great Britain; and from the superior strength of the impregnating sulphur, it does not lose the sulphureous smell even when exposed to a scalding and almost boiling heat; and in distilling it, when three pints had been taken off from a gallon of it, the salt was as strong as the first, and stunk intolerably. It is discutient and attenuating; and a warm bath of it is of great benefit in pains and aches, strains and lameness, dissolving hard swellings, curing old ulcers and scrofulous complaints, and is a powerful cleanser of the stomach and bowels. 3. St Mungo's well is so called from Kentigern a Scotch saint, much honoured hereabouts, whom his tutor Servanus bishop of Orkney, out of affection for him, called Mongah, which in the North or Norway language signifies a dear friend.—The Harrogate season is from May to Michaelmas; and the company assembles and lodge in five or six large houses or inns on the heath, a mile from the village, each house having a long room and an ordinary: the best company used to lodge at Knareborough, which is three miles off.