224 DR. DAUBENY ON THE OCCURRENCE OF IODINE AND BROMINE 
by Mr. Murray, entitled “Experiments on Chemical Philosophy,” which had 
not before fallen in my way ; and from this it is clear, that the detection of 
iodine in the Gloucester Spa water had been made by that gentleman some 
time before I had engaged in the inquiry. I am unable, however, to discover 
in his publication, although it bears so late a date as 1828 , any thing that can 
substantiate the assertion which its author has made in the number of the 
Philosophical Magazine and Annals referred to, as to his having anticipated 
me in the discovery of iodine in the springs at Cheltenham*, or in that of 
bromine in those ol Ingestrie. I consider myself, therefore, still warranted in 
claiming as my own the first public announcement of the existence of bromine 
in our English springs ; but I am far from attaching importance to a dis- 
covery which had been previously made in so many similar situations abroad, 
and would wish it to be understood, that my only pretence for offering to 
the Royal Society the present communication, is the circumstance of my 
having examined on the spot most of the mineral springs hereafter enumerated, 
and having undertaken, wherever it appeared practicable, to obtain an ap- 
proximation at least to the proportion which these principles bore to the other 
ingredients present, and to estimate their comparative frequency and abun- 
dance in the several rock-formations. 
To the geologist, the results of such an inquiry may be of interest, as tending 
to identify the products of the ancient seas in their most minute particulars 
with those of the present ocean : and to the physician it may be an object of 
curiosity, to speculate how far the unexplained virtues attributed to certain 
mineral waters depend on the presence of these ingredients, the energy of 
whose action may perhaps compensate for the minute quantity in which they 
are found. I confess, indeed, that with regard to the former of them, Iodine, 
we ought to be sceptical as to any medicinal agency that can be exerted by so 
small a quantity as a single grain diffused through ten gallons of water, the 
largest proportion in which I have ever detected it. But with respect to the 
second, Bromine, after considering the statements of its discoverer M. Balard, 
as to its highly poisonous operation upon animals, which my own experience 
* Mr. Ainsworth, however, one of the editors of the Edinburgh Journal of Natural and Geogra- 
phical Science, states, that he had communicated the fact of the existence of iodine in the Cheltenham 
waters previously to my announcement of it. 
