BURRELL : DROPPING WELL AT KNARESBOROUGH. 
137 
choleric humours, and to .stop all fluxes proceeding from thence. 
. The quantity of water to be drunk in a day, is, 
from half a pint, to half a gallon, according to age, constitution, 
disease and place affected." It is included amongst " the five 
famous medicinal wells of the Yorkshire Spaws, near Knaresborough," 
by Dr. Neale, in 1656. 
From 1660 — 1678 a very bitter controversy was carried on 
between Drs. Witty, Simpson, and Tonstal regarding the composition 
and medicinal virtues of the Dropping Well, the Knaresborough 
Sweet Spa (now known as the Harrogate Old Spa or John's Well), 
and the Scarborough Spa. The waters were examined by the several 
disputants, and many references are made to the Dropping Well ; 
thus we are told " It often cures inveterate Fluxes 
and a Diabetes," and " the Dropping Well and it (Scarborough 
Waterj only differ in this, that one incrustates sticks and the other 
people's bowels." This controversy became of such a personal 
character that it was taken notice of, and reproved publicly by the 
then Secretary of the Royal Society. 
In 1679 Ralph Thoresby, the celebrated antiquarian, visited 
Knaresborough, and saw the admirable petrifying well." 
Dr. Short, of Sheffield, published his treatise on mineral waters 
in 1734. This work was so highly esteemed at the time that it was 
printed at the request of the Royal Society. He states " The most 
noted of the petrifying waters in Yorkshire is the Dropping Well at 
Knaresborough, which rises up about fourteen yards below the top of 
a small mountain of marlstone (properly a limestone of a very coarse 
grain) on the west side of the town and river, and about twenty-six 
yards from the bank of the Nid ; then it falls down in the same 
contracted rapid stream about a yard, and at a second fall at two 
yards distance it comes two foot lower, then tln^ee or four, and so 
falls upon an easy ascent, divides and spreads itself upon the top 
of an isthmus of a petrified rock generated out of the water there 
falls down round it ; about four or five yards from the river the top 
of this isthmus or rock hangs over its bottom four yards. This rock 
is ten yards high, sixteen yards long, and from thirteen to sixteen 
yards broad. This little island slipt down and started from the 
