Chalybeate

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"The Calybeate Spring Tunbridge Wells"

Chalybeate is a word meaning "containing iron". Chalybeate waters are also known as ferruginous waters.

1 Name
2 History
3 Content of the chalybeate waters from Tunbridge Wells
4 Places with chalybeate springs
5 Places named for chalybeate springs
6 References

The word "chalybeate" is derived from the Latin word for steel, "chalybs", which follows from the Greek word "khalups". Khalups is the singular form of Khalubes or Chalybes, who were mythical people living on Mount Ida in north Asia Minor who had invented iron working.

Ferruginous comes from the Latin word "ferreus" meaning "made of iron," which is derived from the Latin word "ferrum" which means "iron."

Early in the 17th century, chalybeate water was said to have health-giving properties and many people have promoted its qualities. Lord Dudley North discovered the chalybeate spring at Tunbridge Wells in 1606. Dudley North’s physician claimed that the waters contained ‘vitriol’ and the waters of Tunbridge Wells could cure:

the colic, the melancholy, and the vapours; it made the lean fat, the fat lean; it killed flat worms in the belly, loosened the clammy humours of the body, and dried the over-moist brain.

He also apparently said, in verse:

"These waters youth in age renew

Strength to the weak and sickly add

Give the pale cheek a rosy hue

And cheerful spirits to the sad."

The English physician Thomas Sydenham prescribed chalybeate waters for hysteria in 1693.

The Recoaro Spa is on the outskirts of Vicenza, Italy. In 1689, a spring of ferruginous water rich in gas and tasting pleasantly was discovered by Count Lelio Piovene of Vicenza. Local residents called the water from this spring "Saint Anthony's miraculous water" because they claimed it had therapeutic properties.

Dr. Anthony Relhan (ca. 1715-1776), promoted the drinking of mineral waters and particularly water from the chalybeate spring in St Anne's Well Gardens, and published A Short History of Brighthelmstone; with Remarks on its Air, an Analysis of its Waters, Particularly of an uncommon Mineral one, long discovered, though but lately used in 1761.^[1] This led to a substantial increase in public interest in drinking mineral water. The town of Enfield, New Hampshire, even changed its name temporarily to Relhan because of the profound public interest in this form of therapy.^[2]

Princess Victoria, later Queen Victoria, drank the waters every day during her stay in Tunbridge Wells in 1834. She and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, would pay a visit to the spring and then enjoy a stroll along the Pantiles. The water contains a significant level of dissolved mineral salts, with iron and manganese contributing to its characteristic flavour.

An analysis in 1967 showed it to contain (parts per million):

Iron(II) carbonate, FeCO3 25.3
Manganese(II) carbonate, MnCO3 4.6
Calcium sulphate, CaSO4 60.9
Magnesium sulphate, MgSO4 13.4
Magnesium chloride, MgCl2 7.8*
Sodium chloride, NaCl 57.2
Potassium chloride, KCl 7.3

Chalybeate springs are found in:

England

Alexandra Park in Hastings, a town in East Sussex
Chalybeate Kennels near Ingleborough in North Yorkshire
Dorton Spa in the village of Dorton, Buckinghamshire (said to contain four times the iron of Tunbridge Wells)
The Gloucester Spa [1] in the city of Gloucester
Harrogate, a Victorian spa town in North Yorkshire
Kedleston Hall near Quarndon in Derbyshire
Nill Well, between Yelling and Papworth Everard in Cambridgeshire
Sandrock Spring, Isle of Wight - discovered 1811; buried in landslide in 1978
Southwick, Northamptonshire
St. Anne's Well Gardens, Hove, Sussex
St. Blaise's Well in the municipal borough of Bromley, a suburb of London in Kent
Tunbridge Wells, a Wealden town in Kent