360 Analysis of the Chalyleate Spring at Thetford. 
spots that are said to be particularly favourable to the curative 
effects of medicinal waters. The land around the town as it re- 
cedes from the spring consists chiefly of fields richly variegated, 
here and there interspersed with gardens and houses, which in point 
of taste and elegance may-vie with any modern buildings what- 
ever. The uncommon fertility of the soil and romantic scenery, 
which are equalled by few in the kingdom, present a picture dear 
to the man of rural taste, as well as to the invalid. The upper strata 
surrounding the town of Thetford on the Norfolk side consist of 
chalk, and those of the Suffolk side of a dry gravelly mould. The 
heaviest rains that fall here cannot prevent the exercises of riding 
or walking for any length of time after they have ceased. The 
river called the Little Ouse sports itself with many turnings and 
windings near the spring ; it abounds in fish, and permission of 
angling is seldom refused. The surrounding country abounds 
with game. 
Further Particulars concerning this Spring. 
At what period the Thetford chalybeate spring and its virtues 
were first discovered cannot now be ascertained. 
From a memoir published in 1818, by the reverend H. C. 
Manning, minister of St. Peter’s church at Thetford, respecting 
this mineral spring, it is evident that this Fountain of Health was 
known and analysed by Matthew Manning, physician of Thetford, 
in the year1746. The analysis of Dr. Manning was added as an 
Appendix to his large treatise on the application of mineral wa- 
ters to the cure of chronic diseases*, the first precise dissertation 
on that subject + which ‘having been composed in the language 
then common to ail scholars, (the Latin,) has not obtained the 
publicity due either to the subject, or its own intrinstic merits. 
—We shall therefore preface some extracts from this work by 
observing, that the spring having obtained a short-lived celebrity 
by the Doctor’s recommendation of its use, was from no failure 
of its own, but from various causes not now worth detailing (and 
assuredly not from one—which has been invidiously assigned—that 
of medical illiberality)—again closed up; till a happier. spirit 
of research seems once more likely to liberate it from obstruc- 
tion, and to diffuse those benefits it is so well calculated to en- 
sure. 
To promote this desirable end, it has been deemed expedient 
to lay before the public some translated extracts from the above 
analysis; prefacing them with some part of the dedication of 
the above work to the mayor and body corporate of the borough, 
whom the Doctor thus addresses : 
* Aque minerales omnibus morbis chronicis medendis, &c. 
+ Copied from the Reverend M. Manning’s Memoirs. 
“it 
fin. ae 
