Agricola & Acidulae

In dissecting Pliny’s passage, what seemed to have fascinated Georg Agricola perhaps even more than its ferruginous aftertaste was Pliny’s assertions about the medicinal virtues of Tungri waters, in particular the observation that these waters cured tertian fevers and diseases of the stones. Because for Agricola this proved that the waters must be acida.

Deinde aqua fontis Tungrorum, ut ait Plinius, purgat corpora : tertianas febres discutit, calculorumque vitia. Ex quibus effectibus intelligitur esse acida. Nam ea calorem restinguere, & calculos frangere potest. Purgandi vero vis ex alia mistione oritur, atque ferratam esse ferrumgineus sapor, quem ei tribuit Plinius, indicat.[ref]Georgii Agricolæ, De natura eorum, quæ effluunt ex terra, Libri quatuor (Wittebergæ, 1612) 232.[/ref]

Next the water of fons Tungrorum, as Pliny says, purges the body : cures tertian fevers, and diseases of the stones: From which effects it can be understood to be acida. For it is able to quench heat, & break calculi. The strength of purging in truth comes from another compound/mixture, and the ferrugineus taste, which Pliny attributes to it, indicates it to be ferrata.

Just as with the ferrugineus sapor, Agricola went far beyond Pliny, taking one of the features of the Tungri waters described by Pliny and using it to fit the waters into an entire category of mineral waters. Whereas the ferrugineus taste meant that the water was ferrata, the ability to quench heat and break calculi meant that the water must be acida.

In making his case that Tungri water must be acida, Agricola is doing a lot more than simply asserting that because it is acida it can quench heat and break stones. He is saying that waters that are acida are the only waters that can both quench heat and break stones. Furthermore he is also asserting that quenching heat (calorem restinguere) is what Pliny meant by curing tertian fevers (tertianas febres discutit) and that breaking stones (calculos frangere) is what Pliny meant by curing diseases of the stones (calculorum vitia discutit). But is that what Pliny meant? And what exactly is acida? And are waters that are acida the only waters that can quench heat and break stones? And how did Agricola come to such an understanding?

These are quite important questions left unanswered by Agricola’s assertions. Still it will be Agricola’s definition of Tungri water as acida which will have a lasting impact on the search for Pliny’s fountain by lending his authority to Spa’s claim over that of Tongeren since only Spa supporters claimed that their spring was acida. So, in addition to considering what Pliny himself might have intended, it will be helpful to understand the logic behind Agricola’s claims and the implications that follow upon Tungri and Spa waters being acida.

Sauerbrunnen

Unlike the confusion over ferrugineus sapor, there is little disagreement over what Agricola meant by acida. Sixteenth-century Latin-German dictionaries define acidus as equivalent to the German saur which was and is essentially the same as the English term “sour.”[ref]”Aceo”, “Acetum”, “Saur”, Dictionarivm Latinogermanicvm, ed. Petro Dasypodio (Argentorati, Wendelinum Rihelium, 1536); “Acidus,” Dictionarium Latinogermanicum, eds. Petrus Cholinus and Johannes Frisius (Zurich [Tiguri], 1541) 18.[/ref]

Agricola alternately referred to aqua acida as acidula. The “-ula” ending on acidula would in classical Latin suggest that acidula was only “a little sour, sourish, acidulous”, i.e., less sour than acida.[ref]”Acidulus”, “acidus”, L&S.[/ref] However, Agricola treated aqua acida and acidula as roughly equivalent. Thus, in noting that Germania brings forth few acidae, he claimed that chief among these is the famous acidula locate five miles from Elbogena, a town in Bohemia.[ref]Agricola (1612) 29-30. Nec vero Germania paucas acidas gignit: in primisque insignem acidulam ad quintam lapidem ab Elbogena, Bohemiae oppido. “Germany brings forth few acida : and especially the famous acidula at five milestones from Elbogena, a town in Bohemia.”[/ref] In an entire chapter in De natura eorum, quæ effluunt ex terra devoted to “De aquis & fontibus acidis“, he describes a couple of springs as fons acidus but otherwise he describes the springs as either acidulae or with no identification as all. Although perhaps he was suggesting that some of these springs, like Tungri waters, were more acidus than others, he does not make that clear, and they would all seems to share the same qualities albeit perhaps in different degrees.

What Agricola seems to have had in mind in referring to Tungri waters as acida was that they were like the waters that Germans called Sauerbrunnen. Indeed, Agricola in his Interpretatio noted that what German people commonly called Sawerling or Sawerbrunn was equivalent to acidula in Latin.[ref]Georgii Agricolæ, Interpretatio Germanica vocum rei metallicæ (Wittebergæ, 1612) 950.[/ref] One can find numerous references to these waters in German writings before Agricola, spelled variously as Zuerborn, Surborn, Sawer Born, Saurborn, Sauerbrunn, Sauerbrunnen, Sauwerbrunnen, Sauerbronnen, Saurbrun, Saurprunnen, Saurbronn, Sauerborn, Surbrunne, Sawerbrunn, Sawerling, and Sewerling.[ref]”Sauerborn,” “Sauerbrunnen,” Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm, 16 Bde. [in 32 Teilbänden] (Leipzig: S. Hirzel 1854-1960); “Sauer-born,” Pfälzisches Wörterbuch. Begründet von Ernst Christmann, fortgeführt von Julius Krämer, bearbeitet von Rudolf Post unter Mitarbeit von Josef Schwing und Sigrid Bingenheimer. 6 Bände. Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden/Stuttgart 1965-1997. © by Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz; “Surbrunne,” Wörterbuch der elsässischen Mundarten. Bearbeitet von Ernst Martin und Hans Lienhart. 2 Bände. Straßburg 1899-1907. [Nachdruck Berlin/New York 1974]. [ElsWB] The term goes back at least to the Mittelhochdeutsch sûwer-brunne. “Sûwer-brunne”, Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch von Matthias Lexer. Zugleich als Supplement und alphabetischer Index zum Mittelhochdeutschen Wörterbuche von Benecke-Müller-Zarncke. Nachdruck der Ausg. Leipzig 1872-1878 mit einer Einleitung von Kurt Gärtner, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: S. Hirzel 1992).[/ref]

By the time Agricola wrote there was already a substantial literature on particular Sauerbrunnen.[ref]See, e.g., Franz Xaver Lautner, “Abhandlungem aus dem Gebiethe der Natur- une Heilkunde,” Medicinische Jahrbücher des Kaiserlick-Königlichen Österreichischen Staates, VI. Band, I. Stück (Wien, 1820) 84-5.[/ref]

Drawing upon this literature and perhaps his own first-hand knowledge (discussed below), Agricola mentioned some nine contemporary acidulae, with some of the nine comprising multiple springs, all located within different regions of the Holy Roman Empire. (See Table 1.)

Medicinal Virtues

As with aquae ferratae, Agricola believed the sour taste of acidulae implied certain medicinal virtues. Besides the ability to reduce fever and breaks stones that he mentioned with regard to Tungri waters, Agricola added that these waters also had the ability to stimulate urine and dissipate drunkenness.

Acidulæ quoque quæ etiam ipsæ ignem senserunt, urinam potæ movent, & calculosis medentur, & ebrietatem discutiunt. Attamen Lyncestis contraria vi prædita, vini modo temulentos facit.[ref]Georgii Agricolæ, De natura eorum, quæ effluunt ex terra, Libri quatuor (Wittebergæ, 1612) 217.[/ref]

Acidulous waters likewise, which also themselves felt the fire, drunken up move urine, & cure those afflicted with stones, & dissipate drunkenness. nevertheless Lyncestis is possessed with a contrary power, in the manner of wine makes one drunk.

However, it is not clear at all where Agricola got any of these ideas about the medicinal virtues of aqua acida, let along the idea that acida are the only waters that can both quench heat and break stones. No contemporary of Agricola’s associated any of these virtues with aqua acida, acidulae or sauerbrunnen. Unlike aqua ferrea, acidulae were not part of the mineral water framework we discussed in the previous chapter. None of the great Abbasid medical writers wrote about acidulae. Neither did the Renaissance Italian writers who contributed so much to Agricola’s understanding of aqua ferrata.

The only writer to write in some depth about aqua acida before Agricola was fellow German Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566), professor of medicine at the University of Tübingen from 1533 until his death in 1566.[ref]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonhart_Fuchs. Leonhart Fuchs should not be confused with the Gilbert Fuchs we mentioned in Chapter 2 who played such an important role in establishing Spa. It is not clear how or if Gilbert and Leonhart Fuchs were related at all.[/ref] And Fuchs’ ideas about the medicinal virtues of these waters were quite different from Agricola’s.

Fuchs is best known today as the man for whom the fuchsia was named, but in the history of science he is well known as one of three German fathers of botany along with Otto Brunfels (c. 1489-1534) and Hieronymus Bock (1498-1554). In 1542 Fuchs published the fully illustrated De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes which detailed about 400 wild and over 100 domesticated plant species employing over 500 high quality woodcuts.[ref]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbal, cites Frank J. Anderson, An Illustrated History of the Herbals (New York: Columbia University Press, p. 51.[/ref]

In many ways, Fuchs and Agricola complement each other nicely. What Agricola was doing for the subterranean world, Fuchs was doing for the plant world. Both were attempting to unite the best of the knowledge of the ancient world with that of the modern world. Both showed a great respect for Pliny, although Fuchs naturally had more interest in the botanical writings of Theophrastus and Dioscorides, whereas Agricola turned to the mineralogical writings of Theophrastus.

As a German, Fuchs was also quite familiar with Sauerbrunnen. In 1541, a year before De Historia Stirpium came out and five years before Agricola’s works on mineral waters, Fuchs published an account of two acidae. One was an acidus fons (which he noted in German is called Saurbrunn) in Göppingen in the dukedom of Wirtenberg and the other was in Au near Rothenburg. Fuchs asserted that the saurbrunn at Göppingen was useful for sprained limbs; strengthened the belly and liver; helped dropsy, jaundice, putrifying humors, and volvulus (“a twisting of the intestines”); and killed worms.[ref]Leonhart Fuchs, Methodus seu ratio compendiaria perveniendi ad veram solidamque medicinam: mirifice ad Galeni libros recte intelligendos utilis, nunc crescens in lucem aedita (Basel, 1541) 153. See Leonhard Fuchs, The Great Herbal of Leonhart Fuchs: De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes, 1542 (Stanford University Press, 1999) 713.[/ref]

Both of these Sauerbrunnen were later mentioned by Agricola but Agricola’s and Fuchs’ descriptions of the medicinal virtues of Saurbrunnen could not have been farther apart. It was as if they were looking at completely different springs. Thus there does not appear to have been any consensus about the medicinal virtues of Saurbrunnen at the time Agricola was writing.

Classical Acidulae

So where was Agricola getting his ideas about acidulae? As with much of Agricola’s writings, the answer to his inspiration lies in the classics.

Along with the nine modern acidulae located in the Holy Roman Empire, Agricola also mentioned five others located in Italia, Sicilia, and Macedonia.

Tres autem acidulæ aliquam lucem afferunt Italiæ : unu quæ distat à Teano, Sidicino cognomine, ad quartum lapidem : altera non procul ab eadem in Venafrano : tertia in Stabiano quæ dimidia vocatur. habet & Sicilia acidulam, & in Macedonia etiam nobilis est apud Lyncestum.[ref]Georgii Agricolæ, De natura eorum, quæ effluunt ex terra, Libri quatuor (Wittebergæ, 1612) 195-6.[/ref]

But these five were assuredly references to acidulae that Agricola had learned about from classical writers rather than knowledge he had of contemporary springs.

Agricola seems to have believed that the springs he called Sauerbrunnen in German (and acidae and acidulae in Latin) were essentially the same kind of sour springs that the Romans called acidae and acidulae. The chief identifiable characteristic of these acidulae was that they tasted acida, just as the chief identifiable characteristic of aquae ferratae was that it tasted ferrugineus. What Agricola did was link two traditions–classical Roman and Germanic–both based on the idea of identifying waters by their sour taste.

Agricola is clearly beholden to Pliny for the first three of his classical acidulae. In a passage on waters which cure urinary calculi, Pliny begins with the waters on the island of Aenaria. He then mentions the cold waters that go by the name of Acidula located four miles from the town of Teanum Sidicinum; the waters of Stabiæ known as the Dimidiæ; and the waters in the territory of Venafrum which flow out of the spring Acidula. He further includes drinking the waters of Lake Velino, a spring in Syria near Mount Taurus, and the waters of the river Gallus in Phrygia (Pliny Nat. 31.5.9).

In drawing upon Pliny for these three classical acidulae, Agricola actually goes beyond what Pliny might have intended by claiming that the waters at Stabiæ known as Dimidiae were acidulae which Pliny does not explicitly state. One can certainly understand how Agricola might have inferred this out of some confusion whether ex fonte acidulo applies to the waters only at Venafrum or both Venafrum and Stabiae, or because Stabiae was mentioned in between references to springs called Acidula at Teanum and Venafrum.

Furthermore, Agricola seems beholden to Pliny for the name acidulae. Pliny is the only writer before Agricola who refers to waters as acidulae.

Lyncestis

Agricola may also be indebted to Pliny for his claim that the spring near Lyncestis was acidula, the only other acidula that Pliny mentions. In a section having nothing to do with urinary calculi, Pliny claims that the waters of Lyncestis that goes by the name of acidula intoxicate like wine. Agricola likewise claims that Lyncestis was acidula and intoxicates like wine, although Agricola goes on to say that Lyncestis is the exception to the general rule when it comes to intoxication because he believes acidulae in general act to sober up drinkers rather than intoxicate them.

The spring of Lyncestis in Upper Macedonia was one of the most famous springs in classical literature. The idea that the waters of Lyncestis have a certain ὀξύς taste and intoxicate like wine apparently originated with the Greek historian and rhetorician Theopompus writing some time in the 4th century BC. Although the works of Theopompus have been lost over the ages, many fragments have been preserved in the writings of numerous Greek authors that credit him explicitly as the original source of knowledge about Lyncestis. Indeed Pliny seems to have gotten his information about Lyncestis directly from Theopompus since Pliny in a different passage writes that “Theopompus claims that the springs I already mentioned intoxicate” which could only refer to the Lyncestis passage. Other Greek and Roman writers tended to focus on one or the other peculiarities of the Lyncestis water, either the ὀξύς taste like Aristotle and Vitruvius, or the intoxicating properties like Ovid and Seneca.[ref]Plin. Nat. 31.6. See J. A. Cramer, A Geographical and Historical Description of Ancient Greece, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1828) 1: 196; Gordon S. Shrimpton, Theopompus the Historian (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991) 254; Aristoula Georgiadou & David H. J. Larmour, Lucian’s Science Fiction Novel True Histories: Interpretation & Commentary (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998) 73; In Pursuit of Wissenschaft 445, 453; Prudence J. Jones, Reading Rivers in Roman Literature and Culture (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005) 15, 15n46[/ref]

ὀξύς

Whatever the ultimate source of Agricola’s knowledge of Lyncestis, he would surely be familiar with the fact that Theopompus and all the other Greeks who spoke about this spring referred to it as ὀξύς. Furthermore, he would also surely be well aware that the Greeks going back to Democritus had written much about this ὀξύς taste in their discussions about various tastes.

The Greek word ὀξύς originally meant “sharp”, derived from the Indo-European root ak- (“sharp, pointed”).[ref]http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/acies[/ref] The earliest usages of ὀξύς referred to a sharp point or edge, in Homer and Hesiod who used the adjective to describe mostly weapons or anything made of metal.[ref]”ὀξύς”, LSJ.[/ref]

Later Democritus (ca. 460 BC – ca. 370 BC) in developing his atomic theory used the term ὀξύς along with a host of other adjectives to describe the shapes of atoms. He believed that these different shapes were behind the different sensations that humans experienced in each of their senses of sight, taste, smell, hearing, and touch.

Democritus further developed his ideas about the ὀξύς taste within a framework of tastes associated with stones and earths, plants, and animals:

(1) the round and sizable savour sweet;

(2) the one that consists of large figures, but is rough, many-angled and non-curved, astringent;

(3) the savour that is “sharp” in its bodily conformation (as befits it names [ὀξύς]) angular, wrinkled, thin and non-curved, said;

(4) the curved, thin, angular and wrinkled, pungent;

(5) the angular, sizable crooked and with non-interlocking irregularities, salty;

(6) the curved and smooth, crooked but small in size, bitter;

(7) and the thin, round and small, oily.[ref]Theophrastus, DCP 6.1.6.[/ref]

The same basic list of tastes developed by Democritus was built on by Plato, Aristotle, and Theophrastus, and was later adopted by Roman, Abbasid, and German writers, including Agricola and Leonhart Fuchs. Table 2 lists the particular tastes identified by various writers.

	Theo-phrastus	Lucretius	Vitruvius	Pliny	Avicenna	Pseudo-Mesue	Agricola	Fuchs
sour	ὀξύς	acerbus	acidus	acidus	acetositas	acidum	acidae	acidi
sweet	γλυκύς	suavis	dulcis	dulcis	dulcedo	dulce	dulcis	dulces
oily	λιπαρός		pingues	pinguis	unctuositas	unctuosum	pinguis
salty	ἁλμυρός		salsus	salsus	salsedo	salsum	salsae	salsi
bitter	πικρός	amarus	amarus	amarus	amaritudo	amarum	amarae	amari
astringent	στρυφνός				stipticitas	stypticum	astringentis	adstringentes
pungent	δριμύς			acutus	acuitas		acris
harsh	αὐστηρός			austerus			austerae	austeri
unripe				acerbus			acerbae	acerbi
sharp			acer	acer		acre		acres
smooth				suavis
heavy					ponticitas
insipid						insipidum

What Kind of Taste?

What something that was ὀξύς would actually taste like to a modern tongue is not exactly clear from Democritus’ geometrical description, but ὀξύς and a similar adjective ὀξίνης were early applied to wine in the sense of wine gone bad. A related noun ὄξος seems to have meant originally sour wine and eventually came to be the Greek word for vinegar.

The Greeks saw the ὀξύς taste in a positive light. They regularly used ὄξος along with salt as a seasoning for food. Aristotle noted that a salty and ὀξύς water in Sicania, a part of Sicily, was used as ὄξος to season some of their food.[ref]”ὄξος”, “ἦδος” LSJ; Aristotle, Meteorology, trans. W. D. Ross, http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/aristotle_meteorology02.htm. Reprinted in Aristotle, Meteorology, trans. E. W. Webster (Digireads.com Publishing, 2006) 38-9.[/ref] Xenophon observed that, in general, ὀξύς, salty, and pungent foods “not only stimulate the appetite but also afford the most lasting nourishment” (Xen. Cyrop. 6.2.31)[ref]”ὀξύς”, “ὀξίνης”, LSJ.[/ref]

The line between ὀξύς, ὀξίνης, and ὄξος in terms of taste was not always clear. Athenaeus reported that Diphilus (or Sosippus) says in The Woman who left her Husband: — “Have you got sharp vinegar (ὄξος ὀξύ) in the house? (Ath. 4.11). In Plutarch’s Quaestiones Convivales, Philo argues that although the difference between ὀξίνης and ὄξος is just a matter of degree, as in other cases the quantitative difference marks a qualitative change so that there is a very real difference in kind between the two (Plut. Quaes. Conv. 8.9).[ref]See also Plut. De Stoic. 30.[/ref]

Plato

Plato goes beyond Democritus’ strict geometrical description of the different taste particles to explain the effects of these particles. In particularly Plato explained how these particles cause the different taste sensations. Theophrastus summarizes

Plato’s way of assigning the differences of the powers in general to their causing contraction and dilation, letting them make use of roughness and smoothness, and for each of these distinctions of power distinguishing a different savour:

Now the particles that contract the vessels and dry them out, when rougher, are (1) astringent, but, when their roughening is less, are (2) of the dry-wine taste. Others both scour the vessels and wash off the whole surface of the tongue: all that scour to excess, so that they melt away some of the very nature of the part as do the powerful sodas are (3) bitter; those that do not attain to such vigour and do not overdo their scouring, are (4) salty, and are pleasant to us rather than otherwise. Those that after sharing in the heat of the mouth become fine and are ignited by that heat and in turn burn the mouth, and by their lightness dart upward to the senses of the head, cutting their way, are (5) pungent. And those that after being reduced to fine particles by decomposition enter the narrow vessels and stir them up and cause ferment and make them foam and warp are (6) acid. The effect contrary to all the effects here is what belongs to (7) sweetness: what smooths the roughened parts by coating them over and settles and brings them together the parts unnaturally expanded, and again breaks up the parts that have come together, and in a word establishes them to the greatest degree in their natural state, is sweet.[ref]Theophrastus, DCP 6.1.4.-6.1.5.[/ref]

The connection between ὀξύς and sour wine/vinegar became quite strong under Plato’s influence. Plato had a quite different understanding of ὀξύς focused on the fermenting properties of the particles rather than the sharpness of the atoms.

[66a] … when particles already refined by putrefaction, entering into the narrow veins, are symmetrical with the particles of earth and air contained therein, so that they cause them to circulate round one another and ferment, then, in thus fermenting they change round and pass into fresh places, and thereby create fresh hollows which envelop the entering particles. By this means, the air being veiled in a moist film, [66b] sometimes of earth, sometimes of pure moisture, moist and hollow and globular vessels of air are formed; and those formed of pure moisture are the transparent globules called by the name of “bubbles,” while those of the earthy formation which moves throughout its mass and seethes are designated “boiling” and “fermenting”; and the cause of these processes is termed “acid.” (Pl. Ti. 66a-66b)

It seems Plato might have been thinking of vinegar and the kind of “fermenting” reaction that vinegar causes in reacting with certain substances that today we call carbonates, for example, marble, limestone, baking soda, natron (washing soda), or earths containing such substances.

Aristotle

Aristotle rejected Democritus and most of the natural philosophers who reduced taste (and all the other senses) to a matter of touch dependent of the geometry of the particles involved.[ref]Arist., On Sense iv (442 a 29-b 27).[/ref] Aristotle explained the differences between tastes based on the four-element (earth, fire, air, water) theory rather than the shape of the particles.[ref]Arist., On Sense iv (441 b 7-442 a 12).[/ref]

As Aristotle believed that all intermediate color arise from a mixture of black and white, he similarly believed that all intermediate tastes arise from a mixture of sweet and bitter. Indeed as there are either seven or eight basic colors, there are seven or eight basic tastes depending on how one counts them. Just as Aristotle one might assume gray as a variety of black to get the magic number of seven tastes, he likewise imagined that rich might be seen as simply a variety of sweet, or salt simply a variety of bitter.[ref]Arist., On Sense iv (442 a 12-a 29).[/ref] (See Table 2.) Aristotle highlighted the value of both the ὀξύς and saline tastes as seasoning to counteract the effects of sweet nutrients.[ref]Arist., On Sense iv (441 b 23-442 a 12). See also Einarson and Link 240-1n1.[/ref]

Aristotle also distinguished between χυλός (“taste”, i.e., the actual quality that humans sense with their tongue) and χυμός (“flavor”, i.e., inherent qualities that minerals, plants, and animals have which are capable of being sensed by humans). In practice, however, the terms seemed almost interchangeable. Thus both terms are frequently translated as “taste” or “flavor”, or when the term appears to refer to a physical substance rather than a quality to be translated as “juice”.[ref]”χυλός”, “χυμός”, LSJ.[/ref]

Aristotle was the first to apply these ideas about tastes to different types of water. He believed that waters exhibited tastes of all kinds, including an ὀξύς taste.[ref]Arist., On Sense iv (441 b 1).[/ref] Aristotle argued against the idea that these tastes are inherently present in the water, because water by itself is tasteless. Rather water acts as an agent like fire and the sun with the germs of the taste coming from an external agent.[ref]Arist., On Sense iv (441 a 3-a 30).[/ref]

Aristotle’s mineral water framework based on taste was distinct from the mineral water framework in the previous chapter which was based on a particular mineral/metal in the water. The taste framework is much more ancient and made no particular assertions about any particular mineral/metal. Indeed some observers attempted to reconcile the two framework noting that certain tastes were due to the presence of particular minerals, e.g., salt salty, nitrum bitter, alum astringent. However, the mineral-water and taste frameworks could never be completely reconciled because certain tastes could be caused by several different minerals and certain minerals either combined more than one taste or were hard to place. Thus, no one bothered to put ferrugineus waters in this taste framework because the only way writers could describe the taste of ferrugineus waters was ferrugineus.

Aristotle believed it was evident that the juices found in waters also existed in the earth. As proof he noted that many of the old natural philosophers had asserted that water has the qualities like those of the earth through which the water passes. He noted in particular the salty springs which received their taste from the salt in the earth, and the bitter taste of water filtered through ashes (a bitter substance).[ref]Arist., On Sense iv (441 a 30-b 7). See also Robert W. Sharples, ed., Theophrastus of Eresus, Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought & Influence: Commentary Volume 3.1 Sources on Physics (Leiden: Brill, 1998) 192-193, 199; Einarson and Link 226n1, 232-3n2.[/ref]

Aristotle also believed that the juices found in fruits could were the same kinds of juices as those found in waters and the earth.[ref]Arist., On Sense iv (441 a 30).[/ref] Aristotle observed how one taste in fruits can segue into another through the process of “concoction” or “cooking”. He believed the process was basically the same whether it took place in the fruit or in a pot on top of a stove.[ref]Arist., On Sense iv (441 a 10).[/ref]

Theophrastus

Theophrastus plays an important role in our story because it will be through the writings of Theophrastus rather than Democritus, Plato, or Aristotle, that the Romans would come to know much of the Greek thinking about tastes.

Theophrastus obviously draws quite heavily on Aristotle. Thus he continues Aristotle’s theory about the mixture of opposites, four-element threory, and the seven or eight basic tastes.[ref]Theophrastus, DCP 6.1.1-6.1.2, 6.3.1, 6.4.1.[/ref] He also writes about the importance of adding acid and salt as seasoning.[ref]Theophrastus, DCP 6.4.6.[/ref] And, like Aristotle, Theophrastus also writes about waters that are ὀξύς. He writes that ὀξύς waters acquire their flavor through admixture since none of the simple bodies (air, fire, earth, water) have any flavor. Earths acquire their flavor through admixture as well.[ref]Theophrastus, DCP 6.3.1-6.3.2.[/ref]

However there are differences as well between Aristotle and Theophrastus. Theophrastus went beyond Aristotle in describing the compositional makeup of the different flavors. He believed all juices were made up in part from both dry and fluid substances, but some were more dry and others more fluid. Thus he concluded that the ὀξύς flavor was more fluid than dry, whereas the pungent was more dry than fluid.[ref]Theophrastus, DCP 6.11.1-6.11.2.[/ref]

Furthermore, whereas Aristotle wrote that all the flavors that are found in plants can be found in the earth, Theophrastus explicitly noted that some flavors like αὐστηρός and δριμύς and “several more” in plants do not appear in fluids coming from the earth.[ref]Theophrastus, DCP 6.3.4.[/ref] Theophrastus distinguishes between flavors that are found in fluids and flavors that are not found in fluids, with special relevance to the ὀξεις flavor.

Now the savours [χυμοὶ] forming in the earth that belong to fluids, these being the most noticeable savours there (I mean for instance the acid savours [ὀξεις]), and arising evidently from the same necessary causes as in plants, are nevertheless equal neither in number to plant savours nor yet in quality, but are muddier because they do not have the same concoction as theirs nor anything approaching it, and in number they cannot be paired with them, fruits having savours that are numerous and of superior quality, and some at least that do not appear at all in fluids coming from the earth (as the dry-wine savour, the pungent and several more).[ref]Theophrastus, DCP 6.3.4.[/ref]

It is not exactly clear what Theophrastus means by savours that belong to fluids. The implication is that there are other kind of savours that do not belong to fluids. The statement, however, does not seem to suggest that one cannot find these savours — including ὀξεις — in solids, just that there are some savours that do not belong to fluids and thus must belong solely to solids.

Theophrastus goes into a lot more detail than Aristotle on the changes in flavor that plants undergo. In particular, Theophrastus highlights how a bunch of grapes (βότρυς) and the mulberry (συκάμινος) pass from astringent (στρυφνός) to ὀξύς and from ὀξύς to sweet (γλυκύς). He writes that the passage from ὀξύς to sweet (γλυκύς) happens in other “vinous” fruits (οἰνώδης) as well — among which he elsewhere includes the apple (μῆλον), pear (ἄπιον), and the medlar (μέσπιλον) — because ὀξύς lies nearest to “vinous sweetness” (οἰνώδης γλυκύτης).[ref]Theophrastus, DCP 6.6.3-6.6.4, 6.14.4.[/ref] Theophrastus also goes into detail on how and why wine turns ὀξύς, a process well known to the ancient Greeks which Theophrastus found quite similar to what happened with other separated fruit juices.[ref]Theophrastus, DCP 6.7.5.[/ref] Theophrastus did not see any distinction in the ὀξύς taste of any of these fruits. Indeed, he found it interesting that wine went from an ὀξύς taste to a sweet taste to the very same ὀξύς taste with which it began, “as if resolved into its matter.”[ref]Theophrastus, DCP 6.7.6.[/ref]

By labeling both the unripe grapes as ὀξύς and wine that had gone bad as ὀξύς we can see how Theophrastus was developing a more inclusive understanding of this taste. The juice squeezed from unripe grapes, better known in English as verjuice (from the Middle French vertjus “green juice”) is far more tart than the juice of the ripened grape due to the presence of higher levels of malic acid which diminishes as the quantity of sugar increases when the grapes mature.[ref]John Redman Coxe, The American Dispensatory (Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1831) 726; Linda Bisson, “In Search of Optimal Grape Maturity,” Practical Winery & Vineyard, July/August 2001, http://www.practicalwinery.com/julaug01p32.htm; http://www.summagallicana.it/lessico/a/agresta%20o%20agresto.htm; “verjuice”, OED.[/ref] Although we generally would describe the taste of verjuice as “sour”, it is most definitely a different taste than that of vinegar which is often described as “sour” but is due to the presence of acetic acid produced by the oxidation of the ethanol in wine or fermented fruit juice into acetic acid through the aerobic action of acetobacter.[ref]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetic_acid_bacteria; http://www.fao.org/docrep/x0560e/x0560e10.htm; http://www.wer-weiss-was.de/theme143/article1867054.html[/ref]

Theophrastus believed this change in flavors was driven by the process that he calls πέψις which might be variously translated as “ripening”, “cooking”, “concoction”, “digestion”, or “fermentation” depending on the substance undergoing the process, but always with the assumption that heat is the driving force in the process.[ref]Theophrastus, DCP 6.6.5; πέψις, LSJ.[/ref] “Concoction, operated by heat, separates some things from the rest and vaporizes them, thickens and sets others, reduces others to fine particles, and changes others (to speak broadly) in quality, just as it does in cooking”.[ref]Theophrastus, DCP 6.7.3.[/ref]

Besides heat, Theophrastus also noted water is essential in the passage from a ὀξύς to γλυκύς taste in pomegranates since the pomegranate is “a tree that likes water and is said to turn from acid to sweet when well-watered.”[ref]Theophrastus, DCP 6.18.7.[/ref] He perhaps conceived of this passage from ὀξύς to γλυκύς as part of a process in which every pericarpion begins dry and astringent becomes at first ὀξύς and then γλυκύς as fluid flows in and increases the size of the pericarpion.[ref]Theophrastus, DCP 6.6.5.[/ref]

Translating ὀξύς into Latin

In Table 2 one can see there was a lot of continuity from writer to writer on the basic tastes. There were, however, some differences. Although there seems to be a fairly close one-to-one correspondence between the Greek and Roman taste terms, the correspondence is not so clear with ὀξύς. Indeed the Romans seem to have had at least three distinct tastes (acidus, acer, acerbus) that the Greeks may have simply translated ὀξύς.

Acidus, acer, and acerbus had long been associated with acetum (the Latin equivalent of ὄξος “vinegar”) going back at least to Plautus. In the play Pseudolus, Plautus refers to aceti acidissumi, while in Bacchides he refers to aceto acre, and in Truculentus to acerbo aceto.[ref]Pl. Ps. 2.4.49; Pl. Bac. 3.3.1; Pl. Truc. 1.2.82.[/ref] All these Latin and Greek words share the same Indo-European etymology.

In subsequent uses of the two adjectives acer and acidus, acer far more than acidus developed along the lines of ὀξύς as defining the geometry of particles that affected all the senses, not just taste. Roman use of acidus focused almost exclusively on taste more in line with the Greek adjective ὀξίνης rather than ὀξύς. Later writers like Celsus only use the adjective acer when referring to acetum, reserving acidus for describing fruits and other “sour” substances. Thus Virgil described the juice of the sorb-apple that is used to make a cheap wine substitute as acidus.[ref]”Acer”, “acidus”, L&S. See Cels. 4.9, 4.10, 6.7, 6.11, 6.13; Verg. G. 3, 380. See also Henry Nettleship Contributions to Latin Lexicography (1889; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 22-23.[/ref] However, the Romans did not seem to see acer and acidus as mutually exclusive. Celsus suggested that acetum acre could also be considered acida.[ref]Cels. 4.16.[/ref]

Vitruvius

One can also see this blurring beween acer and acidus in the writings of Vitruvius, the first Roman writer to address aqua acida. Vitruvius asserted aqua acida forms when waters pass through a soil with a sharp and sour juice.[ref]Vitr. 8.3.17-19.[/ref]

Of all the classical influences on Agricola, Vitruvius was undoubtedly the most important. Agricola drew heavily on Aristotle and Theophrastus for his understanding of tastes and subterranean substances in general, but there is little in the writings of the Greeks that would lead one to conclude that waters that broke stones had to be acidulae. The first hint of anything like this appears in the work of Vitruvius.

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (born c. 80-70 BC, died after c. 15 BC) was a Roman architect and engineer, most famous today as the author of De Architectura, the only complete classical text on Roman architecture, probably written around 25 BC.[ref]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvius; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_architectura[/ref] Four decades before Pliny published his encyclopedia, Vitruvius had analyzed aquae acidae in some detail as part of his analysis in Book 8 of De Architectura in which he summarizes problems of water supply: how to find it, types of water, how to judge its quality, and how to transport it.

Vitruvius does not go into detail on the different tastes and their effects as the earlier Greeks had done, but Vitruvius does mention most of the basic tastes including the ὄξυς taste. (See Table 2.) Furthermore, as we have noted, Vitruvius made a straightforward assertion that acidulous waters cure urinary calculi by breaking stones.

There are several springs with acid veins [acidae venae fontium], like that of Lyncestus, and in Italy [Uienna], and in Campania at Teanum, and many other places, which have the ability, once they have been drunk, to break up the stones that occur in human bladders. 18. This seems to happen naturally, because a sharp and acid sap [acer et acidus sucus] occurs in the soil there, and the veins of water exiting through this soil are tainted with its acidity [acritudine]; then these waters have then entered the body, they break up, as they encounter them, those sediments of water that have accumulated as concretions. We can observe the reasons why these things are broken apart by acids [ex acidis] in the following way: if an egg is put in vinegar [in aceto] for a while, its shell will soften and dissolve. Likewise, if lead, which is highly flexible and extremely heavy, is placed in a vessel and vinegar poured around it, and this vessel is then covered and sealed, it will come about that the lead dissolves and creates white lead pigment. 19. For the same reasons, if copper, which is still more solid by nature, is similarly treated, it will dissipate and form verdigris. So will pearls. So will hard limestone (silex), which neither iron nor fire can dissolve on their own, but when these stones have been heated by fire, sprinkle vinegar on them and they break apart and dissolve. Since, therefore, we can see these things occur before our eyes, we can surmise on the same principles that so people with gallstones can be cured by nature in similar fashion by acids, on account of the sharpness of their sap [ex acidis propter acritudinem suci].[ref]Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Ingrid D. Rowland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 101-2.[/ref]

It appears that Agricola could have drawn directly on Vitruvius for his ideas about the ability of acida aqua to break bladder stones.

Corrosive Acridity

Theophrastus undoubtedly had a tremendous influence on Vitruvius’ thinking about aqua acida. Vitruvius noted that he had seen some of these effects of different waters firsthand and others he had read in books written by Theophrastus, Timaeus, Posidonius, Hegesias, Herodotus, Aristides, and Metrodorus (Vitr. 8.3.27).[ref]For a discussion of the other Greek sources mentioned by Vitruvius, see Ingrid D. Rowland, ed., Ten Books on Architecture, by Vitruvius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 275, 277.[/ref] We also know that Theophrastus wrote a book “On Waters” to go with his other books on the other three elements “On Fire”, “On Stones”, and “On Air”. Undoubtedly the “On Waters” book would have been filled with the kind of information that Vitruvius and Pliny would both have jumped on.[ref]Robert W. Sharples, ed., Theophrastus of Eresus, Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought & Influence: Commentary Volume 3.1 Sources on Physics (Leiden: Brill, 1998) 190, 190n545, 190-1n546, 193.[/ref] We know from extracts from “On Waters” preserved by other writers, it seems highly likely that both Pliny and Vitruvius drew on this source for at least some of their statements for which they do not explicitly credit Theophrastus. (On Vitruvius’ reliance on Theophrastus for ideas about the intoxicating power of the waters of Paphlagonia, see below.)

Like Aristotle and Theophrastus, Vitruvius placed great emphasis on the role of juices (succi) in the earth. The waters pass through veins of these juices and become saturated with the juices before reaching the surface (Vitr. 8.3.26). He wrote that some waters are sweet because of a sweet juice in the soil while others are salty because they run through a country with salt pits (Vitr. 8.3.7). Others flow through asphaltic soil and release asphalt when they reach the surface (Vitr. 8.3.8-9). He also noted waters that pass through soils containing a coagulating juice which causes the waters to form an incrustation of stone when the waters reach the surface, hardened by the heat of the sun and air (Vitr. 8.3.9-10). There are also springs that are very bitter because they pass through a bitter juice in the soil (Vitr. 8.3.11)

And again like Aristotle and Theophrastus, Vitruvius asserted that the juices in the soil which cause the different tastes in waters also are the cause of the different tastes in plants. The roots of the plant draw up the juices in the soil and pass it on to the stem where it eventually imparts its taste to the fruits. Vitruvius asserts that fruits in different regions taste different because their soils contain different juices. It the soils all had the same juices or the plants did not draw up juices, all fruits and other parts of plants would taste the same which is clearly not the case (Vitr. 8.3.12-13). He also suggests these different juices in the water are the reason why the waters in some region turn their cattle and sheep different colors (Vitr. 8.3.13-14). Some waters are deadly because they flow through a soil with a noxious juice (Vitr. 8.3.15-17).

Vitruvius explains that this great variety of effects of different waters was due to the great variety of juices in the earth. For example, Vitruvius also mentions springs which intoxicate; cause swellings in the throat; give people fine singing voices; or make people abstemious, dull, or lose their teeth (Vitr. 8.3.20-25). Although Vitruvius does not mention a particular juice that would cause these effects, he does suggest that these effects are all due to the juices in the soil. He points by analogy to the many kinds of juices in the human body, such as blood, milk, sweat, urine, and tears. If the human body which makes up only a small part of the earth had so many juices, imagine how many juices the entire world has (Vitr. 8.3.26)!

And Vitruvis might have gotten some of his ideas about the affinity between ὄξος (“vinegar”) and waters with an ὄξυς taste which both Theophrastus (and Aristotle before him) emphasized. Theophrastus in his On Stones also described in detail the preparation of white lead and verdigris using vinegar, two of the processes that Vitruvius draws on for his understanding of the power of vinegar to cure urinary calculi.[ref]Theophrastus, On Stones 57, 187-193.[/ref]

However, if Vitruvius was indeed drawing on the Greeks for his idea about tastes, he goes far beyond the Greeks in analyzing the ὀξύς taste. Vitruvius says there are several springs with acidus veins because an acer and acidus juice is in the ground tainting the waters with its acritudo. He says that acidus water breaks up sediments that have accumulated as concretions in the body like bladder stones just like acetum softens an egg shell. acetum similarly breaks apart and dissolves stones that have been heated by fire. Vitruvius presumes on the same principles that acidus water can cure bladder stones on account of its acritudo.

It is not clear exactly what Vitruvius calls the ὀξύς taste. Vitruvius calls the waters acidus so presumably he would call the taste of the waters acidus. But he says the juice that produces this taste is both acer and acidus. Surely Vitruvius saw some distinction between acer and acidus but it is not clear what that distinction is. Acer would seem to correspond with the quality of acritudo to which Vitruvius attributes the marvelous properties of acetum, and by inference acidus waters. Thus one presumes that Vitruvius would also say that acetum is acer but it does not necessarily follow that he considered acetum to be acidus. Thus it appears that for Vitruvius, while aquae acidae got their qualities from “a sharp and sour juice”, it was the acritudo (“sharpness”) of these aquae acidae that actually was responsible for the dissolving, not the sourness of the waters.

Pliny’s “Sour” Tastes

The shift to distinguishing different types of “sour” tastes becomes more mature in the writings of Pliny. Thus we see that Pliny characterized acerbus as the “sour” taste of unripe fruits which would later turn sweet, in contrast to acidus which was the taste of fruits which were “sour” when fully ripe. Acer furthermore was a term that Pliny applied to vinegar and other substances which today we might distinguish as more strongly acidic than sour fruits. Besides acidus, Pliny also employed adjectives like acidulus (“slightly sour, sourish”) and subacidus “(somewhat sour, sourish”), nouns like acor (“sourness”), and verbs like acere (“to be sour”), acescere “(to turn/become sour”), and inacescere (“to turn/become sour”).[ref]”Acidulus”, “subacidus”, “acor”, “aceo”, “acesco”, “inacesco”, L&S.[/ref]

We also learn quite a lot from Pliny about what substances were considered acidus. Pliny described several different fruits as acidus. Pliny noted that the pomegranate (mala punica) has five kinds of kernels: the sweet (dulcia), the acrid (acria), the mixed (mixta), the sour (acida), and the vinous (vinosa) (Plin. Nat. 13.31, 17.103, 23.52). He further observed that, for pomegranate, fig, and apple trees, those with sour fruits (acidis) live longer than those with sweet fruits (dulcibus). The same is true with grape vines, especially the more fruitful varieties (Plin. Nat. 16.110). Pliny also referred to one type of pear as pleasant for its acidulous taste (acidulo sapore), presumably because it was slightly tart, and another type of pear as having an acidulous juice (acidula suci) (Plin. Nat. 15.17).

Pliny also referred in general to sour vegetables (olus acidum) (26.38); sour goats’ milk cheese (28.32); sour milk (acido lacte) (20.54, 28.34); the acid eructations from the stomach (stomacho acida ructanti) (20.69); and sour breath (acidum halitum) (30.7). Pliny also claimed that “it is very evident that the principle which causes the dough to rise is of an acid nature (naturam acore) (18.42).[ref]Pliny also notes that amylum (“starch”) from wheat can turn sour. See Plin. Nat. 18.30. Among other substances that can turn sour, Pliny mentions that the approach of a woman on her period will cause [grape] must to become sour (acescunt) (7.24) and honey turns sour [acescentia] at the very slightest contact with dew (11.15).[/ref]

Overall, the Romans, like the Greeks, seemed to have found acor a quite pleasant taste (Plin. Nat. 11.101, 14.47). Sourness also seems to be a taste the Romans were well attuned to. For example, Pliny notes some fruits like that of the bdellium of Bactriana were bitter to the taste without the slightest sourness (gustu amarum citra acorem) (12.20) while the tears of balsanum ought to have a delicate taste without the slightest sourness (non subacidus) (12.51).

Pliny occasionally refers to another taste as asper (“rough”) which may have some aspect of what we would call “sour”.[ref]”Asper”, L&S.[/ref] For example, Pliny describes the taste of the citron, the first citrus fruit commonly available in the Mediterranean, as asperrimus (asper in the highest degree), rather than acidus, acer, or acerbus (Plin. Nat. 15.36).

By acerbus, Pliny consistently referred to the taste of unripe fruits and berries, quite distinct from acidus and the other mature fruit tastes.[ref]On the pomegranate, see Plin. Nat. 13.31, 23.51-52.[/ref] While acidus is a pleasant taste, acerbus is described as distinctly harsh and unpleasant. For example, Pliny described the taste of spring apples as acerbus which he claimed were unwholesome to the stomach, disturb the bowels, contract the bladder, and damage the nerves (Plin. Nat. 23.48). He also mentioned the “harsh” berry (baca acerba) of the female cornel tree which no animal will touch (Plin. Nat. 16.54). Perhaps by acerbus Pliny meant what the Greeks referred to as στρυφνός (astringent) which was a taste that Pliny never identified as such.[ref]While Pliny did note that certain minerals were astringent, he did not really describe it as a taste so much as a physical effect on some part of the body.[/ref] Thus he claimed that wild apples resemble the “harsh” apples of spring (silvestria mala similia sunt vernis acerbis) and act astringently on the bowels; indeed, for this purpose they should always be used before they ripen (Plin. Nat. 23.49).

Just as Pliny distinguished the “sour” taste of unripe fruit from the “sour” taste of fully mature fruit, he also seems to have seen the “sour” taste of vinegar as distinct from these other two “sour” tastes. In this he may have rejected the notion of Theophrastus that the ὀξύς taste of the not fully ripe fruit and vinegar were the same taste. If Theophrastis was a lumper, Pliny was a splitter using different adjectives to capture differences in taste.

Pliny never actually directly described the taste of acetum. However, he did refer to a type of honey called acetum as being ex dulci acre (“sharp out of sweet”) (Plin. Nat. 11.14). Perhaps this honey is called acetum because it goes from being sweet to sharp, suggesting that Pliny saw acetum as sharp. In addition he described other substances as having an acer taste including a variety of pomegranate (see above), the juice of the cypress, cunila, wild marjoram, cresses, and mustard (Plin. Nat. 14.45 19.66).

Similarities between Vitruvius and Pliny

There are a lot of similarities between Vitruvius and Pliny. They both mentioned three acidulae and in particular they both mentioned aqua acidae/acidulae in Lyncestis and in the vicinity of Teanum, for both of which Pliny employs the identical phrasing quae vocatur acidula in his description. Vitruvius quite explicitly asserts that acidulae in general are good for curing urinary calculi and Pliny includes two of the three acidulae (Teanum, Venafrum) in his list of waters that are good for this purpose. And most of what Vitruvius writes about the special properties of vinegar (i.e., the ability to soften egg shells, dissolve pearls and lead, and break stones) appears in Pliny, although scattered throughout his encyclopedia rather than part of a focused analysis of the properties of vinegar.[ref]On the ability of vinegar to dissolve pearls, see English Plin. Nat. 9.58-59. On dissolving eggs, see Plin. Nat. 10.80. On dissolving lead, see Plin. Nat. 34.54. On breaking stones, see Plin. Nat. 23.27.[/ref]

There is also a passage in Pliny’s chapter on mineral waters which demonstrates a close affinity to a parallel section in Vitruvius:

Pliny:

est autem utilis sulphurata nervis, aluminata paralyticis aut simili modo solutis, bituminata aut nitrosa, qualis cutilia est, bibendo itaque purgationibus. (Plin. Nat. 31.21)

Waters impregnated with sulphur are good for the sinews, and aluminous waters are useful for paralysis and similar relaxations of the system. Those, again, which are impregnated with bitumen or nitre, the waters of Cutilia, for example, are drunk as a purgative.

Vitruvius:

Omnis autem aqua calida ideo [quod] est medicamentosa, quod in pravis rebus percocta aliam virtutem recipit ad usum. namque sulphurosi fontes nervorum labores reficiunt percalefaciendo exurendoque caloribus e corporibus umores vitiosos. aluminosi autem, cum dissoluta membra corporum paralysi aut aliqua vi morbi receperunt, fovendo per patentes venas refrigerationem contraria caloris vi reficiunt, et hoc continenter restituuntur in antiquam membrorum curationem. bituminosi autem interioris corporis vitia potionibus purgando solent mederi.

Est autem aquae frigidae genus nitrosum, uti Pinnae Vestinae, Cutiliis aliisque locis similibus, quae potionibus depurgat per alvumque transeundo etiam strumarum minuit tumores. (Vitr. 8.3-5)

Every hot spring has healing properties because it has been boiled with foreign substances, and thus acquires a new useful quality. For example, sulphur springs cure pains in the sinews, by warming up and burning out the corrupt humours of the body by their heat. Aluminous springs, used in the treatment of the limbs when enfeebled by paralysis or the stroke of any such malady, introduce warmth through the open pores, counteracting the chill by the opposite effect of their heat, and thus equably restoring the limbs to their former condition. Asphaltic springs, taken as purges, cure internal maladies.

There is also a kind of cold water containing natron, found for instance at Penne in the Vestine country, at Cutiliae, and at other similar places. It is taken as a purge and in passing through the bowels reduces scrofulous tumours.[ref]Translation from Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture. Vitruvius. Morris Hicky Morgan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. London: Humphrey Milford. Oxford University Press. 1914, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Vitr.+8.3&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0073[/ref]

Although Pliny refers to sulphurata, aluminata, bituminata, and nitrosa where Vitruvius speaks of sulphurosa, aluminosa, bituminosa and nitrosa, it seems quite apparent that Pliny is summarizing Vitruvius here. However, Pliny does not explicitly credit Vitruvius for any of this. He does not even include Vitruvius among his list of authors for Book 31. (He does however list Vitruvius among his authorities for Books 16, 35, and 36 which have nothing to do with mineral waters.)

Over the centuries, scholars have made claims for some specific Vitruvian influence on Pliny. For example, one scholar asserts that Pliny’s description of constructing mosaics which, while briefer, largely echo Vitruvius closely.[ref]Cf. Pliny, Hist. Nat. 36.60-64; Vitruvius, De. arch. 7.1; Richard E. M. Moore, “A Newly Observed Stratum in Roman Floor Mosaics”, American Journal of Archaeology 72 (1968) 57-68, esp. 57-58.[/ref] Nevertheless, other scholars have observed that no one in ancient Rome, including Pliny, seems to have been that much influenced by Vitruvius.

It is possible that both Vitruvius and Pliny drew on some common Greek source. The only author that Vitruvius lists in Book 8 and Pliny in Book 31 is Theophrastus.[ref]Pliny cites among Roman authors, M. Varrone, Cassio Parmense, Cicerone, Muciano, Caelio, Celso, Trogo, Ovidio, Polybo, and Sornatio. And among foreign authors, Callimacho, Caecilio, Ctesia, Eudico, Theophrasto, Eudoxo, Theopompo, Polyclyto, Juba, Lyco, Apione, Epigene, Pelope, Apelle, Democrito, Thrasyllo, Nicandro, Menandro comoedo, Attalo, Sallustio Dionysio, Andrea, Nicerato, Hippocrate, and Anaxilao See Plin. Nat. 1.73-74; C. Plinii Secundi, Historiae Mundi, Libri XXXVII, 2 vols. (Venice: Joseph Antonelli, 1844) 1: 157. Vitruvius cites no Roman authors but lists the Greek authors Theophrastus, Timaeus, Posidonius, Hegesias, Herodotus, Aristides, and Metrodorus. See Vitr. 8.3.27. For a discussion of the other Greek sources mentioned by Vitruvius, see Ingrid D. Rowland, ed., Ten Books on Architecture, by Vitruvius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 275, 277.[/ref] Scholars have noted the strong influence of Theophrastus on both Vitruvius and Pliny in their writings on mineral waters.[ref]Sharples 190, 190n545, 190n546.[/ref] However, one cannot imagine that Theophrastus would have a reference to Penne in Vestine country or Cutiliae in Sabine country as Vitruvius does.

One other possible candidate for a common source is Posidonius (ca. 135 BC – 51 BC), a Greek Stoic philosopher and geographer who traveled all over the Roman Empire and beyond, visiting Greece, Hispania, Sicily, Dalmatia, Gaul, Liguria, North Africa, and the eastern shores of the Adriatic. Although none of his works survive intact, numerous fragments suggest he wrote at length on the mineral waters he learned about in his travels, and may very well have written on the springs of central Italy.[ref]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posidonius[/ref]

Vitruvius cites Posidonius as an authority for his chapter on mineral waters, and at least one scholar has suggested that Posidonius had a significant influence on Vitruvius Book 8, Section 3 from which the passage above was taken.[ref]Sharples 190n545.[/ref] However, Pliny does not list Posidonius among his foreign authorities for Book 31 and it would be odd if Pliny chose not to list or forgot to list Posidonius, because he lists Posidonius as an authority in several other books. One possibility is that one of Pliny’s other Latin or Greek authorities had already copied some of Posidonius’ ideas on mineral waters.

However, the simplest explanation is that Pliny was summarizing Vitruvius and simply did not credit him. Indeed, one would think that if Pliny had drawn on any source other than Vitruvius, his summary would not seem nearly as close to Vitrvuius’ passage as it does.

But even if Pliny is using Vitruvius as an unacknowledged source for Chapter 31, there are some unexplained tensions in the accounts of Vitruvius and Pliny concerning aqua acidae/acidulae that need to be explained. Some differences are easily explained away. For example, Vitruvius refers to aquae acidae where Pliny refers to acidula. However, this could be nothing more than Vitruvius calling a water sulphurosa and Pliny calling the same water sulphurata, just a slight variant of the same name meaning the same thing. Another difference is that, while both Theophrastus and Pliny refer to the acida/acidula at Lyncestis, Pliny claims this water is intoxicating and Vitruvius does not. However, as we have already seen, Pliny probably got the idea about intoxication from Theopompus or any of a number of other Greek writers.

More complicating are differences about other springs like the spring at or near Teanum. Vitruvius refers to an acidae in Campania at Teanum whereas Pliny refers to the cold waters that go by the name of Acidula located four miles from the town of Teanum Sidicinum (quae vocatur Acidula ab Teano Sidicino IIII p. — haec frigida). There is no doubt that both are referring to the same town known in antiquity as Teanum Sidicinum that was located in Campania. But in one account the spring is “at the town” and in the other it is “four miles from the town”. Pliny adds the further detail that he could not have gotten from Vitruvius — the fact that the waters are cold.

There are several different possible explanations for the discrepancy over Teanum. Perhaps Pliny was drawing upon some source other than Vitruvius. The kind of detail that Pliny offers — the exact distance from the town and the postscript that the waters are cold — seems to suggest either first-hand knowledge or second-hand knowledge from some itinerary of travels through the Campania region. Perhaps both Pliny and Vitruvius were drawing upon some common third source like Posidonius. But it is also possible that Vitruvius and Pliny were not even writing about the same spring.

Another point of tension between Vitruvius and Pliny revolves around the mystery of Vitruvius’ third acidula. Pliny clearly describes a third acidula as located in Venafrum. Vitruvius for his part describes a third acidula in Italia but it is not at all clear where this acidula is located. In the quotation from Vitruvius above, the name of the third spring was rendered in as “Uienna” because “uienna” was the most common way it was written in extant medieval manuscripts as well as the first print edition in Rome circa 1486 and in the Florentine edition of 1496. But “Uienna” is put in brackets in the translation because no one has been able to ascertain what place “uienna” refers to or even if there is such a place. Indeed all editions of Vitruvius since the 16th century have assumed that “uienna” was simply a mistranscription and have proposed alternatives. The Venetian edition of 1497 changed the name to “vicina”. In the major edition of Fra Giocondo of Verona, the first edition of which appeared in 1511, Giocondo changed the name again, this time to “uirena”, which was repeated by Cesare Cesarino in his Italian translation of 1521 and later editors. The problem with all these renderings was that nobody back then or today still had any idea where “uienna”, “vicina”, or “uirena” was.[ref]Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, De architectura (Impressum Venetiis) : (sumptu miraque diligentia Ioannis de Tridino alias Tacuino, 1511) 79; Vitruvius, Di Lucio Vitruvio Pollione de architectura libri dece traducti de latino in vulgare affigurati : commentati…, trans. and ed. Cesare Cesariano (Come, Gottardo da Ponte, 1521), Liber Octavuus, CXXXIIII; Architecture ou Art de bien bastir, de Marc Vitruue Pollion Autheur, trans. Ian Martin (Paris, 1547) 116. See also Io. Gottlob Schneider, ed., Marci Vitruvii Pollionis De Architectura Libri Decem, 3 vols. (Lipsiae, 1808) 3: 120-1; Lucia A. Ciapponi, “Fra Giocondo da Verona and His Edition of Vitruvius”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 47 (1984) 72-90; Javier Fresnillo Núñez, Las Correcciones en el Ms. 10075 B.N. en la Transmisión del Texto de Vitruvio (Madrid, 1988) 296, http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/servlet/SirveObras/04700629799147728654480/003601.pdf; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Giocondo; http://leonardodavinci.stanford.edu/submissions/clabaugh/history/othermen.html. Cesarino included a lengthy commentary on this particular passage from Vitruvius, including the observation that Aristotle had earlier written on acidulous waters, but does not any more specifically indentify uirena. See Cesare Cesariano, ed., Di Lucio Vitruvio Pollione de architectura libri dece traducti de latino in vulgare affigurati : commentati…, by Vitruvius (Come, Gottardo da Ponte, 1521), Liber Octavuus, CXXXIIII-CXXXVn.[/ref]

It is unclear who was the first to decide that Vitruvius actually meant “Velino”. Most commentators attribute this insight to Guillaume Budé who annotated a copy of Vitruvius in the early 1500s.[ref]Ciapponi 75; Núñez 296; http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~wulfric/articles/nan395/nan_3.htm. See also Louis Delaruelle, Guillaume Budé, les origines, les débuts, les idées maîtresses (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1907); Vladimír Juren, “Fra Giovanni Giocondo et le début des études vitruviennes en France”, Rinascimento 14 (1974) 101-115. On Budé, see “Gillaume Budé of Paris, 26 January 1468-22 August 1540, Contemporaries of Erasmus, Vol. 1 A-E (1985) 212-7; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Budé.[/ref] However, apparently it was not until Claude Perrault’s 1684 French translation of Vitruvius that Velino actually showed up in print, with Perrault saying he got this out of Budé. Perrault’s thinking was that “Virena” most likely was a mistranscription for “Velino” because Pliny had mentioned “Velino” as as acidulae that was capable of dispersing urinary calculi.[ref]Les Dix Livres d’Architecture de Vitruve, trans. and ed. Charles Perrault (Paris: Jean Baptiste Coignard, 1673) 240-241, 240-1n2.[/ref] Regardless of these difficulties, a consensus emerged around the idea that Vitruvius must have been referring to the lake at Velino whose waters Pliny had mentioned as curative of urinary calculi. By the 1800s classical scholars were fairly unanimous in correcting the original Latin, usually with some explanatory comments tracing the suggestion to either Budé or Perrault. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century translations of De Architectura into English (quoted above) take the correction for granted with nary a mention of the earlier problems with the place-name.[ref]Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, De Architectura, Libri Decem, ed. Io. Gottlob Schneider (Lipsiae, 1808) 120-1; Celse, Vitruve, Censorin, Frontin, avec la Traduction en Français, ed. M. Nisard (Paris, 1846) 130, 269; Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, trans. and ed. Morris Hicky Morgan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914), http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Vitruvius/8*.html; Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Ingrid D. Rowland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 101-2.[/ref]

Modern Descendants

Could the modern descendants of these ancient acidulae possibly help up understand what Vitruvius, Pliny, and other Romans meant by aqua acida/acidula and help resolve some of these seeming tensions between Vitruvius and Pliny?

First, as with our search for the Tungri waters, identifying the location of ancient springs is notoriously difficult. Also we have to deal with the problem of changes in springs that can occur over the course of two thousand years. Without knowing the exact location, we will be hard-pressed to know for certain whether we are dealing with the same spring. And without knowing something about how much the spring could have changed over time, we cannot be certain that the modern descendant can give us any clue as to what the ancients might have meant by different categories of waters.

Lyncestis

Case in point, the most famous of all the ancient acidulae – Lyncestis. Back in 1673, the English traveler Dr. Edward Brown published an account of his travels through Macedonia in which he reported coming upon “acidulae, of good esteem, the springs large and plentiful” at a place he called “Eceisso Verbeni” which he believed to be identical with the classical Lyncestis spring. All later accounts that deal with the issue simply repeat Brown’s assertion.[ref]J. A. Cramer, A Geographical and Historical Description of Ancient Greece, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1828) 1: 196, cites A brief account of some Travels in Hungaria, Macedonia, Thessaly, &c. by Edward Brown, M. D. Physician in Ordinary to his Majesty. Lond. 4to. 1673. p. 45; “Lyncestis aqua”, William Hazlitt, The Classical Gazetteer: A Dictionary of Ancient Geography, Sacred and Profane (London: Whittaker, 1851) 209; “Lyncestis”, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, illustrated by numerous engravings on wood. William Smith, LLD. London. Walton and Maberly, Upper Gower Street and Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row; John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1854.[/ref]

Actually the name “Eceisso Verbeni” tells more of a story than Brown let on. The Turks called the village Екши Су (Ekshi Su) which means “sour water” in Turkish, while the Slavs called the village Горно Върбени (Upper Vrbeni). The official Greek name of the village today is Xino Nero which means “sour water” as well.[ref]http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%95%D0%BA%D1%88%D0%B8_%D0%A1%D1%83; http://www.macedonians.com.au/forum/showthread.php/12400-ov%C4%8Darani-a-fake-toponym. On ekshi, see Charles Wells, Practical Grammar of the Turkish Language (1880; New Delhi: AES Reprint, 2003) 132.[/ref] Indeed a big part of the village economy today is the bottling of a fizzy mineral water under the label “Xino Nero” which the local factory has been bottling and selling since 1958 and the locals still claim is good for treating kidney stones in addition to a host of other ailments.[ref]http://florina-history.blogspot.com/2010/02/blog-post_02.html; el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ξινό_Νερό_Φλώρινας.[/ref]

“The most famous fountain in north Greece. The sour cool water is continuously pouring full of health. People who come just to fill their small tanks for home use know.”[ref]http://www.angelfire.com/space/xinonero/pixeng.htm[/ref]

However it is questionable whether the ancient Greeks would have even considered the site of Xino Nero to be within the region of Lyncestis.

Lyncos or Lyncestis, meaning “the Land of the Lynx” in Greek, was one of the six tribal kingdoms — Elimeia, Eordaea, Orestis, Lynkestis, Pelagonia, Deuriopus — each of which became a separate regions of Upper Macedonia under Phillip II of Macedon following his defeat of the Illyrians in 358 BC.[ref]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Macedonia[/ref] The exact location of each of these regions is not precisely known but the general consensus is that Lyncestis occupied what is today called the Florina Basin south of the modern Crna River.

The capital of Lyncestis was the ancient city of Heraclea Lyncestis or Herakleia Lynkestis (Greek: Ἡράκλεια Λυγκηστίς or Ἡράκλεια Λύγκου) which archaeologists have solidly located as occupying a site 2 km south of the present-day city of Bitola in the Republic of Macedonia. Philip II founded the city in the mid-4th century BC following his conquest of the Lyncestis and incorporation of the territory into his kingdom of Macedonia. Following the Roman conquest of Macedonia in the mid-2nd century BC, Heraclea Lyncestis became an important town on the Via Egnatia, the main Roman road through the region built by the Romans between 146-120 BC as a contination of the Appian Way, extending from Dyrrachium (modern Durrës) on the Adriatic Sea to Byzantium (later Constantinople, now Istanbul). Archaeologists have discovered at this site the remains of votive monuments, a portico, baths, a theatre (built during the reign of Hadrian), and town walls.[ref]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclea_Lyncestis; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Egnatia; “Herakleia Lynkestis”, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites. Stillwell, Richard. MacDonald, William L. McAlister, Marian Holland. Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press. 1976, http://www.chlt.org/sandbox/perseus/pecs/page.1966.a.php; John Vanderspoel, “Provincia Macedonia”, A Companion to Ancient Macedonia, eds. Joseph Roisman and Ian Worthington (Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) 264-267.[/ref]

The southern boundary of Lyncestis was marked by the Xino Nero-Klini Ridge which divides the Florina Basin from the Ptolemais-Amynteon Basin.[ref]A. Metaxas, et al., “Geological Evolution — Stratigraphy of Florina, Ptolemaida, Kozano and Saradaporo Graben”, Proceedings of the 11th International Congress, Athens, May 2007, Bulletin of the the Geological Society of Greece 40 (2007): n.p.; http://ancient-medieval-macedonian-history.blogspot.com/2008/12/upper-macedonia-lynkos.html. The Florina Basin is actually part of a fairly narrow N-S graben that extends some 150 km from Ellispontis in the south to just north of Bitola in the Republic of Macedonia. The Florina Basin is the northernmost of a series of four separate basins broken up by E-W ridges caused by faults that cross the graben.[/ref] In ancient times this ridge marked the division between Lyncestis and Eordaea. The old Macedonian road connecting Eordaea and Lyncestis passed through the Kirli Derven defile (also called the Klidi/Kleidi Pass). This pass has played a major role in Greek history from the invasion of Lyncestis by the Macedonian king Perdiccas in 423 BC through the Battle of Vevi in World War II.[ref]”Lyncestis”, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, illustrated by numerous engravings on wood. William Smith, LLD. London. Walton and Maberly, Upper Gower Street and Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row; John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1854; Inscriptiones Graecae, Volumen X, Pars II, Fasciculus II (Berlin: Gualterus de Gruyter, 1999) 1; http://www.kozani.gr/MouseioAianhs/viaegnatia.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vevi_(1941)[/ref] Scholars have also reached a consensus that the Via Egnatia built by the Romans went through this pass as well.[ref]Charles Edson, “The Location of Cellae and the Route of the Via Egnatia in Western Macedonia”, Classical Philology 46(1) (Jan. 1951): 1-16; N.G.L. Hammond, “The Western Part of the Via Egnatia,” Journal of Roman Studies 64 (1974) 185-194; N.G.L. Hammond and M.B. Hatzopoulos, “The Via Egnatia in Western Macedonia, I”, American Journal of Ancient History 7 (1982) 128-49; Simon Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991-2008) 2: 274.[/ref]

Xino Nero is actually located immediately south of the Xino Nero-Klini ridge and thus technically would have been in Eordaea and not Lyncestis.[ref]N. G. L. Hammond, A History of Macedonia, Volume 1: Historical Geography and Prehistory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972) 13.[/ref] Furthermore almost all the major springs in the Florina Basin are also located south of this ridge in Eordaea along the downthrust (southern) side of the 30 km long NE-SW-striking Nimfeo-Xino Nero-Petra fault that created the ridge and through which subterranean water percolates to the surface in several springs.[ref]D. Mountrakis, et al., “Neotectonic and seismological data concerning major active faults, and the stress regimes of Northern Greece,” Tectonic Development of the Eastern Mediterranean Region, eds. A. H. F. Robertson and D. Mountrakis (Bath: The Geological Society Publishing House, 2006) 649-669, esp. 664; George Hatziyannis and Apostolos Arvanitis, “Natural Analogues of CO2 Leakage in Florina Area, N. Greece”, 2nd CGS Europe Knowledge Sharing Workshop, October 17-19, 2011, Maria Laach, Germany; Holloway et al. 35.[/ref] The geology of the region has not changed that much in two thousand years. The same fault system created Lake Begoritis which was mentioned in a few ancient texts and has been fully identified. Ancient springs would most likely have sprung up along the same fault and thus been relatively in the same locations.

The Xino Nero springs also do not fit Theopompus’ description found in a fragment in Athenaeus which describes the ὀξύς as “by the river Erigo”.[ref]http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Athenaeus/2A*.html#ref91, cites F. H. G. I.316; Shrimpton 254.[/ref] Identifying ancient rivers can be as tricky as identifying ancient regions but most scholars consider that by Erigo the ancients understood the modern Crna Reka since Crna in Macedonian means “black” which is considered to be a translation of the earlier Thracian name Erigon meaning “black”, akin to the Greek érebos (“darkness”). However the Crna at its closest is about twenty miles away from Xino Nero.[ref]James Wiseman and Djordje Mano-zissi, “Excavations at Stobi, 1970”, American Journal of Archaeology 75(4)(Oct., 1971), pp. 395-411, p. 395 (quote); “Erigonus”, L&S; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crna_(river); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eragon_(disambiguation).[/ref] There is another river, the Sakoulevas, a tributary of the Crna, which passes closer to Xino Nero, but is still not really close enough for Xino Nero to be “by” the river since the Xino Nero-Klidi ridge separates the spring from the river.[ref]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verno[/ref]

There are reports of carbonated springs as being common throughout the entire Florina Basin area, including the area north of the Xino Nero-Klini ridge which would have comprised the ancient Lyncestis. There are reports of faults running throughout this basin that might have contributed to springs emerging at many different points in the past.[ref]Mary Goldsworthy, James Jackson, and John Haines, “The continuity of active fault systems in Greece”, Geophys. J. Int. 148 (2002): 596-618, esp. pp. 608-611.[/ref] Unfortunately we know very little about these springs. Hatiyannis and Arvanitis report one spring (labeled as S5) in the area near the village of Ammochori but there is no indication of what kind of water this spring produces or whether there are any indications that this could have been an ancient spring.

If we assume for the moment, then, that one of the more permanent springs immediately south of the territory traditionally considered to be Lyncestis might be a better candidate, it is highly questionable whether Xino Nero itself was actually the site that the ancient Greeks were referring to since no ancient ruins or artifacts have been found in the immediate area of the springs.

As to the kind of water that the Lyncestis spring might have produced, the mineral content is dependent on where exactly the spring would have been located and the particular aquifers involved. However, we can be fairly certain that any spring in this region in ancient times as today would have been highly carbonated because all the aquifers under the Florina Basin are highly carbonated and have been for millennia. Indeed, even today this Florina basin is the main commercial source of CO2 in Greece, being used to make around between 20,000 and 30,000 metric tonnes of liquid CO2 annually, mainly used in the food and cryogenic industries.[ref]J. Pearce et al., “A review of natural CO2 accumulations in Europe as analogues for geologial sequestration” Geological Storage of Carbon Dioxide, Geological Society Special Publication 233, eds. S. J. Baines and R. H. Worden (Bath: The Geological Society Publishing House, 2004) 29-41, esp. 38; S. Holloway, J.M. Pearce, T. Ohsumi, and V.L. Hards, A Review of Natural CO2 Occurrences and their Relevance to CO2 Storage, British Geological Survey, Natural Environment Research Council, Sustainable Energy and Geophysics Programme, External Report CR/05/104 (Keyworth, Nottingham: British Geological Survey, 2005) 35-36.[/ref]

The carbon dioxide is quite pure with CO2 content between 90 and >99.5% along with slight traces of CH4 (22 ppm-1.3%) and other gases (e.g. He: 0.3-66 ppm). Analysis of the presence of isotopes of C and He in the gas demonstrates that the CO2 predominantly originates in the earth’s crust with a small but significant contribution (~10%) from the mantle.[ref]W. D’Alessandro, et al., “The impact on water quality of the high carbon dioxide contents of the groundwater in the area of Florina (N. Greece)”, Advances in the Research of Aquatic Environment, Volume 2, eds. Nicolaos Lambrakis, George Stournaras, and Konstantina Katsanou (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2011) 135-143, esp. 138-139; Hatiyannis and Arvanitis.[/ref]

Beyond being highly carbonated, it would be hard to say for certain how mineralized the ancient Lyncestis water was without knowing the exact location and aquifer involved. Analysis of a large sample of wells in the region shows there is quite a diversity in ion concentration in different parts of the aquifer. [ref] For chemical composition of the Florina groundwater samples, see D’Alessandro 142.[/ref]

If, however, we assume that the Lyncestis spring was at Petres then we might also assume that the waters would be like those along the Xino Nero fault today which narrows down the range of possible mineral content considerably. Firstly these spring arise from the deeper aquifer in the karstic carbonate rocks on the eastern and southern margins of the Florina basin which shows a lot less variability that the shallower artesian aquifer which occurs throughout the basin.[ref]Hatiyannis and Arvanitis.[/ref]

Waters from the karstic springs are of Ca-HCO3 type with a small concentration of Mg. pH of the karstic water ranges between 5.6 and 7.7 with the water being acid in most of the basin and alkaline in the north and south. TDS values range from 400 mg/l in the north to 1,300 mg/l in the south.[ref]Hatiyannis and Arvanitis.[/ref] Overall the spring water seems quite in tune with the reported mineral content of commercially available bottled Xino Nero water. (See Table 4.) Since the geology has not changed much in two thousand years, the odds are that springs in this area in classical times would be highly similar to the kinds of springs one can find today in this area.

Little gas (CO2)		4.1 g/l
Acidity / Alkalinity (PH)		5.9
Calcium (Ca++)		281 mg/l
Magnesium (Mg++)		26.1 mg/l
Sodium (Na+)		4.8 mg/l
Potassium (K+)		1.3 mg/l
Bicarbonate (HCO3-)		969.9 mg/l
Chloride (Cl-)		5.8 mg/l
Sulphate (SO4–)		5.7 mg/l
Nitrate (NO3-)		8.3 mg/l
Silica (SiO2)		15.9 mg/l
Conductivity		1250 µS/cm

To claim that the Lyncestis waters were lightly mineralized, highly carbonated waters is nothing new. Ever since the early 19th century, there has been a general consensus that the description of these waters as simultaneously both “sour” and “intoxicating” could only mean that the waters were impregnated with carbon dioxide gas.[ref]See, e.g., Thomas Thomson, “Waters, Mineral”, The Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine, eds. John Forbes, Alexander Tweedie, and John Conolly, 4 vols. (London, 1835) 4: 455; John Bostock and H.T. Riley, eds., The Natural History of Pliny (London: George Bell & Sons, 1893) 1: 135n6.[/ref]

Teanum

It would seem that locating a spring specifically identified as four Roman miles from Teanum Sidicinum would be a lot easier than locating the Tungri or Lyncestis waters. But one will not find complete consensus in the later literature.

Today Teanum Sidicinum goes by the name of Teano and within a four mile radius of the modern town of Teano there are a few mineral springs. Indeed, curiously among the springs that Pliny notes were intoxicating, in addition to Lyncestis he notes a spring in agro Caleno. And scholars agree as well that, by Calenum, Pliny was referring to the modern Calvi (also known in years past as Cales from the Greek Κάλης), a town located only three road miles from Teano.[ref]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teano; “Cales”, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, illustrated by numerous engravings on wood. William Smith, LLD. London. Walton and Maberly, Upper Gower Street and Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row; John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1854.[/ref]

Conceivably, the intoxicating spring “in agro Caleno” could be the same spring as Pliny’s acidula four miles from Teanum Sidicinum. For his information on Calenum, Pliny almost undoubtedly was drawing on Valerius Maximus who among intoxicating waters mentioned a stream in Macedonia — most likely Lyncestis — and another in the region of Calenum (alteram in Caleno agro). (Valerius Maximus makes no mention of Teanum.)[ref]http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/valmax1.html; Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings: One Thousand Tales from Ancient Rome, trans. Henry John Walker (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2004) 42.[/ref]

One location regularly mentioned over the centuries as the site of both the acidula near Teanum and the intoxicating spring near Calenum is a spring located in the modern Italian town of Francolise which is about 7 miles from Teano and 6 miles from Calvi. The first to mention Francolise in the context of these classical springs was the Italian writer Giambattista della Porta (1535-1615) in a book published in 1558. Porta actually did not mention Pliny, suggesting only that Francolise was the Teanum spring to which Vitruvius was referring.[ref]Io. Baptista Porta, Magiae Naturalis, sive De Miraculis Rerum Naturalium Libri IIII. (Naples, 1558). This book was translated into English and published as John Baptista Porta, Natural Magick, A Neapolitane: in Twenty Books (London, 1658; reprint NuVision Publication, 2005) 202. For biographical background on Porta, see http://homepages.tscnet.com/omard1/jportat3.html.[/ref]

Lukas Holste, better known as Lucas Holstenius, in his annotations on Cluvier’s Italia Antiqua, claimed — seemingly independently of della Porta — that Pliny’s Teanum spring was located at Francolise, adding the detail that the spring was “in the territory of Calvi under the castle commonly called Francolici” (in territorio Calvensi sub Castello vulgo Francolici dicto). Jean Hardouin seconded Holstenius’ opinion in his 1723 edition of Pliny and numerous later English, French, and Latin editions of Pliny have continued to repeat this as a truism.[ref]Lucae Holstenii, Annotationes in Italiam Antiquam Cluverii, Annotationes in Geographam Sacram Caroi a S. Paulo; Italiam Antiquam Cluverii; et Thesaurum Geographicum Ortelli (Rome, 1666) 256; Jean Hardouin, ed., Caii Plinii Secundi Historiae naturalis libri XXXVII, 2 vols. (Paris, 1723) 2: 547n.[/ref]

Some eighteenth-century studies realized that the works of Valerius Maximus, Pliny, and Vitruvius, confounded acqua Calena and acidola di Tiano.[ref]Francesco Maria Pratilli, Della via Appia Riconosciuta e Descritta da Roma a Brindisi, Libri IV (Napoli: Giovanni di Simone, 1745) 423; Camillo Pellegrino, Apparato alle antichitá di Capua o vero Discorsi della Campania, 2 vols. (Napoli: Giovanni Gravier, 1771) 1: 450-1.[/ref] The confusion continues to the present with some commentators asserting that Francolise was the Teanum spring to which both Pliny and Vitruvius referred[ref]Craufurd Tait Ramage, The Nooks and By-Ways of Italy (Liverpool: Edward Howell, 1868) 274.[/ref], others claiming that the Francolise spring was Valerius Maximus’ and Pliny’s Calenum spring,[ref]”Francolise”, Dizionario Universale Topografico Storico Fisico-Chimico Terapeutico, comp. Antonio Perone (Napoli: Angelo Trani, 1870) 435-436; Giancarlo Bova, “Aspects of Economic Life in Francolise during the Middle Ages,” Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management 7(16) (August 2010) 86-91, quote p. 86, http://um.ase.ro/no16/7.pdf; http://www.archemail.it/arche9/0francolise.htm; http://www.archemail.it/arche9/0francolise1.htm[/ref] and still others claiming that all the Teanum/Calenum references in Vitruvius, Pliny, and Valerius Maximus were to the same Francolise spring.[ref]Heinrich Nissen, Italische Landeskunde, 2 vols. (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1902) 2: 695n2; M. Alwin Cotton and Guy P. R. Métraux, The San Rocco Villa at Francolise (London: British School at Rome, 1985) xxii; Rita Compatangelo, Sur les routes d’Hannibal: paysages de Campanie et d’Apulie (Besançon: Presses universitaires franc-comtoises, 1999) 37, 37n97; http://www.sapere.it/enciclopedia/Francolise.html[/ref] Indeed, manufacturers in 1959 marketed a bottled mineral water called Calena Acqua Minerale produced in Francolise in which their label quoted Vitruvius on Teanum, Pliny on both Teanum and Calenum, and Hardouin on Francolise.[ref]http://www.acqua2o.it/labelitalia/calena/calena.htm. That the people of Francolise still refer to these waters as the fonte Calena, see http://www.icasfrancolise.it/ICAS/francolise.htm[/ref]

Acqua Minerale CALENA
Sorgente Calena Acidula Alcalina Digestiva Diuretica Radioattiva. Ottima acqua minerale da tavola, leggerissima. Acqua limpida, incolore, inodore, di sapore acidulo gradevole.
Le indicazioni terapeutiche dell’acqua minerale Calena si possono così riassumere: attività favorevole sulle vie biliare, sull’apparato gastrico, sulle cellule epatiche, anticalcolotica (Università di Napoli, Istituto di Chimica Farmaceutica e Tossicologica. dir prof. Mario Covello, Napoli 18 marzo 1959).
L’acqua minerale Calena trova il suo campo di azione nelle seguenti malattie: gastriti acute – subacute – croniche; gastralgie sintomatiche; dispepsie (in senso lato); dispepsie intestinali; stipsi sintomatiche. Nelle malattie del fegato; nelle colelitiasi. Nelle malattie dei reni. Nelle malattie del ricambio; uricemia – gotta – obesità – glicosurie e lievi forme diabetiche. In dermatologia: eczemi – diatesi essudative – dermopatie uricemiche – pruriti. In oculistica: cataratta diabetica – congiuntiviti uricemiche. In otorinolaringoiatria: laringiti ed otiti uricemiche. In neurologia. (Università di Perugia, Istituto di Clinica Medica Generale, Terapia Medica e Cattedra di Idrologia Medica, dir. prof. G. Dominici, Perugia 21 marzo 1959).
Cenni storici: Vitruvio (27 anni a.C.) la definì: “Campana con proprietà di sciogliere i calcoli”. Plinio Secondo (tra il 27-79 d.C.) Libr. II cap. 103: “item in Paflagonia et in Agro Caleno… aqua quae vocatur acidula” e più oltre nel Libr. XXXI: “In Aenaria insula, calculosis mederi, et quae vocatur acidula, ab Theano Sidicino quattuor milia passum”. Harduino (storico francese) così commenta: Extant etiamnum acquae longe lateque expetuntur ad calculi dolores, luxta castellum vulgo Francolisi dictum”. Coluzzi: “Ita levis est, ut vix in ventricuio percipiatur”.
Vendita autorizzata con Decreto M. S. n. 723 del 21-5-60.
Analisi chimico-fisica del 20 gennaio 1959: Università di Napoli, Istituto di Chimica-Fisica (dir. prof. Ugo Beretta). Analisi batteriologica del 22 luglio 1957: Istituto di Igiene dell’Università di Perugia (dir. prof. Alessandro Seppilli).

[ref]http://www.acqua2o.it/labelitalia/Calena/Calena_ouv.htm[/ref]

Nineteenth-century studies demonstrated that the Francolise spring produced 1000 liters per day and the water was clear, emitted a great quantity of bubbles, and had a slight vinous odor. Based on analysis performed 24-27 June 1819 Gaetano Maria La Pira found a temperature of 19ºC, a tincture of litmus turned the water red, and a tincture of Brazil wood turned the water yellow. In a pound of water, La Pira found 3.3 grains of magnesium carbonate, 6.6 grains of calcium carbonate, 0.5 grains of siliceous earth, and 17.5 cubic inches of carbon dioxide gas.[ref]”Francolise”, Dizionario Universale Topografico Storico Fisico-Chimico Terapeutico, comp. Antonio Perone (Napoli: Angelo Trani, 1870) 435-436. There seem to be some inconsistency in La Pira’s analysis. While most acids turn yellow with tincture of brazil wood and alkalis turn purple, solutions of calcium or magnesium cations, carbonate anions, and free carbon dioxide as in common in many mineral waters turn purple initially but fades as the carbon dioxide escapes. See “Brazil Wood”, A Dictionary of Chemistry and Mineralogy, eds. A. & C. R. Aikin, 2 vols. (London, 1807) 1: 173.[/ref] The 1959 label on the Calena Acqua Minerale bottle reports similar results: 858 mg/l carbon dioxide, 39.5 mg/l silica (SiO2), 55.3 mg/l sodium (Na+), 25.2 mg/l potassium (K+), 254.9 mg/l calcium (Ca++), 76.5 mg/l magnesium (Mg++), 60.2 mg/l chloride (Cl-), 53.0 mg/l sulphate (SO4–), and 1,171.5 mg/l bicarbonate (HCO3-) ions.[ref]http://www.acqua2o.it/labelitalia/calena/calena.htm[/ref] A 2008 study reported that the Calena spring in Francolise had a temperature of 21ºC and 600 mg/l CO2.[ref]S. Del Prete et al., “I sinkholes in Campania (The sinkholes in Campania region)”, Mem. Descr. Carta Geol. d’It. 85 (2008) 149-212, esp. 154. There was no mentions of H2S.[/ref] A 2010 article reports that at the foot of the hill where Francolise is located flows a spring which is the springs that Pliny called Calena, with a temperature of 22° C that is rich in bicarbonate and carbon dioxide, and beneficial, among other things, for eczema treatment.[ref]Giancarlo Bova, “Aspects of Economic Life in Francolise during the Middle Ages,” Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management 7(16) (August 2010) 86-91, quote p. 86, http://um.ase.ro/no16/7.pdf[/ref]

More recently the discovery of the ruins of two typical rural Roman villas of the late Republican period in the immediately vicinity of the spring, inhabited from the last decades of the second century B.C. to the second century A.D, further supports Francolise’s claim.[ref]Bova 86-87; http://www.archemail.it/arche9/0francolise.htm; http://www.archemail.it/arche9/0francolise1.htm[/ref]

If the Francolise spring is indeed the ancient Teanum/Calenum spring that Vitruvius, Valerius Maximus, and Pliny were speaking and the Xino Nero spring is typical of the ancient Lyncestis spring, a pattern seems to be emerging of what the ancients might have meant by “sharp” waters. The fact that both Lyncestis and Teanum/Calenum springs refer to waters that are both acidae and intoxicating and that both Xino Nero and Francolise bottled waters are known to be highly similar in their mineral content is certainly suggestive. Taken all together, this suggests that perhaps by acidae and intoxicating the ancient Greeks and Romans recognized similar kinds of lightly mineralized, highly carbonated waters.

However, before jumping to conclusions, we need to remember that there are several possible springs in the Teanum area that are far more mineralized than Francolise, and two thousand years ago there could easily have been other springs. Likewise Lyncestis. None of the other candidates in either of these areas show any significant levels of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) which (as we will see below) was a chief characteristic of sulfurous waters. However, alternative springs very likely showed significant levels of iron which would suggest a quite different taste sensation than the lightly mineralized taste of most bottled mineral waters today which contain absolutely no iron.

Most of the alternative springs in the Teanum area contain significant levels of iron. Indeed, rather than Francolise, some nineteenth-century writers suggested that the Teanum spring mentioned by both Pliny and Vitruvius was actually several iron-rich springs called Le Caldarelle located just outside the town of Teano itself where the remains of some ancient buildings called Il Bagno Nuovo could be found. (And this despite the fact that Pliny explicitly described the Teanum spring as being four miles away from the town.)[ref]Francesco Maria Pratilli, Della Via Appia Riconosciuta e Descritta da Roma a Brindisi, Libri IV (Napoli: Giovanni di Simon, 1745) 227; Cramer 2: 194; “Teano”, Dizionario Universale Topografico Storico Fisico-Chimico Terapeutico, comp. Antonio Perone (Napoli: Angelo Trani, 1870) 1026-1028; “Teanum”, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, ed. William Smith, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1873) 2: 1117; James Reuel Smith, Springs and Wells in Greek and Roman Literature Their Legends and Locations (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1922) 625.[/ref] Just a couple of months after analyzing the Francolise spring, on 15 September 1819 La Pira analyzed Le Caldarelle. And like the previous spring, La Pira found Le Caldarelle to be clear, releasing high quantities of gas bubbles, and the temperature was the same 19ºC. But La Pira claimed it smelled more atramentous than vinous, and it had the taste of ink. In a pound of water, La Pira found 2.0 grains of calcium chloride, 0.5 grains of calcium carbonate, 1.5 grains of iron oxide, and 14 cubic inches of carbon dioxide gas.[ref]”Teano”, Dizionario Universale Topografico Storico Fisico-Chimico Terapeutico, comp. Antonio Perone (Napoli: Angelo Trani, 1870) 1027. See also Corografia Fisica, Storica e Statistica dell’Italia e delle sue Isole, ed. Attilio Zuccagni-Orlandini 11 (Firenze, 1844) 65.[/ref] Not all references to Caldarelle have suggested this was Pliny’s or Vitruvius’s Teanum spring.[ref]See, e.g., Ramage 274.[/ref] Furthermore, many 19th- and 20th-century guides did not even refer to Le Caldarelle as acidula, rather seeing it as an example of a chalybeate spring or acqua ferrata.[ref]See, e.g., A Handbook for Travellers in Southern Italy, 5th ed. (London: John Murray, 1865) 21; Campania, Guida d’Italia, Vol. 18, ed. Antonio Canino (Milan: Touring Editore, 1981): 113, 162-3; http://www.erchempertoteano.it/Teano/Passato/Manifatture/Acqua-Ferrata.htm[/ref] But since it is not clear exactly what kind of spring the Romans envisioned by acidulae it is possible.

There is also a world famous mineral water called Ferrarelle produced in Riardo, approximately the same distance by road as Francolise from Teano. The natural spring water shows significant levels of iron (which is suggested by the very name of the water itself) which are stripped from the water before bottling.[ref]Jervis 110-111; Campania, Guida d’Italia, Vol. 18, ed. Antonio Canino (Milan: Touring Editore, 1981) 215.[/ref] Although there is no evidence of a Roman presence near this spring which makes it less likely to have been Pliny’s Teanum spring than the Francolise spring, the point is that Ferrarelle and Le Caldarelle are far more typical of other candidates than Francolise in terms of mineral content.

Similarly, we have already seen that it is not totally clear what kind of water the ancient Greeks identified as “sour” at Lyncestis. Many of the wells drilled in the shallower artesian aquifer north of Xino Nero-Klini Ridge show significant levels of iron.

Venafrum

So does Pliny’s third acidulae at Venafrum also fit the Francolise-Xino Nero pattern? Unfortunately, there is little evidence to support the presence of any water like that of Francolise or Xino Nero anywhere near the modern town of Venafro.

This problem was recognized as early 1571 by Andrea Bacci in his monumental tome De Thermis, the most complete survey of mineral springs in Europe up to that time. Where Della Porta just a decade earlier had been ecstatic to discover Vitruvius’ Teanum acidula at Francolise, Bacci upon personal investigation had found only Sulphureas aquas (“sulphurous waters”) near Venafro. Near these waters, Bacci found ancient traces of baths which he judged could be restored with no difficulty for common use.[ref]Andrea Bacci, De Thermis (Venice, 1588) 391.[/ref]

Giovanni Trutta in 1776 noted two springs in the area around Venafro. The first was le acque sulfuree which arises in a place called Cimentone. He claimed that this was the spring that Pliny was referring to and that the waters were still much esteemed, by some seeking to purge the bowels, and others for salutary baths.

He reported that close to this acque sulfuree was another spring, the acqua di Tuliverno (called la Forma) which rose from inside a cave on the Terra di S. Maria dell’Oliveto. He claimed that the common people called it Aqua Janara, because it does not appear in some years.[ref]Giovanni Francesco Trutta, Dissertazioni istoriche deel antichità alifane (Napoli: Stamperia Simoniana, 1776) 223-4; Giuseppe Antonini, La Lucania (Napoli, 1795) 183n; Giuseppe di Cesare, Storia di Manfredi re di Sicilia e di Puglia, 2 vols. (Napoli, 1837) 1: 229.[/ref] Janara was the local name for a type of witch about which many stories were told. Calling the spring Aqua Janara might suggest the locals believe the spring was haunted by the witch which is why the waters did not flow in certain years.[ref]http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janara/[/ref] The flow must, however, have been sufficient enough to support a mill since a mill was reported to use the waters in the late 18th century.[ref]Giuseppe Antonini, La Lucania (Napoli, 1795) 183n.[/ref] And in 1914 an ancient waterwheel was discovered in the solidified mud at the bottom of the Triverno stream.[ref]Cesare Rossi, Flavio Russo, and Ferruccio Russo, Ancient Engineers’ Inventions: Precursors of the Present (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009) 89-90. See also R. J. Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology, 3rd ed., 3 vols. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993) 2: 93.[/ref]

According to Cotugno, Nicola Pilla (1772-1855), a physician and geologist from Venafro, in the first scientific account of the matter, reported in 1796 that he found that the waters near Venafro contained calcium sulfate, calcium carbonate, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide. Obviously he was analyzing the waters called solfuree.[ref]Gabriele Cotugno, comp., Memorie Istoriche di Venafro (Napoli, 1824) 251-3. On Pilla, see Alessandro Marra, La Società economica di Terra di Lavoro: Le condizioni economiche e sociali nell’Ottocento borbonico La conversione unitaria (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2006) 24.[/ref]However, Cotugno went on to claim that this solfuree was none other than Pliny’s Venafrum spring which Cotugno called fonti di acque acidole. He located this acque acidole a short distance from the osteria di Triverno, quite close to the Volturno river, the spring arising from a small promontary of calcareous tufa. Osteria di Triverno undoubtedly refers to the modern hamlet of Taverna Triverno (about 4 miles east of Venafro). In support of this claim Cotugno reported the ruins of buildings, tubes of bronze and stones, and all the statues and friezes turned up by the plow, together with an abundance of ancient coins, which led him to believe that the Romans had a spa here.[ref]Gabriele Cotugno, comp., Memoire Istoriche di Venafro (Napoli, 1824) 251-3.[/ref]

Cotugno acknowledged, as well, Trutta’s acqua di Tuliverno which Cotugno called the Acqua di Triverno. He claimed the spring rises at the foot of the hill of S. Maria Oliveto with a good stream. The carbonate of lime dissolved by the water is deposited on the stream bed and created a form of calcareous tufa. He notes the ancients observed that sometimes the waters failed to flow and drew omens from this of abundance or scarcity, sickness or health, and peace or war. Indeed Cotugno suggested there was some truth to these omens.[ref]Cotugno 248-251. In 1855 Ernest Capocci offered a theory of the cause of this intermittent flow and its dread effects and described a way of solving the problem. See Ernest Capocci, “Sulla Sorgente Intermittente di Triverno nell’Agro Venafrano”, Atti del Reale Istituto d’ Incoraggiamento 8 (1855) 309-321.[/ref]

Giovanni Sannicola (1808-1869) was a physician and surgeon at the hospital in Venafro for over twenty years, a member of more than 200 scientific societies and academies, and a prolific author having published over 60 pamphlets and several hundred articles and essays in the major literary and medical journals of the time.[ref]On Sannicola, see Alessandro Marra, La Società economica di Terra di Lavoro: Le condizioni econimiche e sociali nell’Ottocento borbonico La conversione unitaria (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2006) 185-186.[/ref] In a small booklet on the city of Venafro, he briefly mentions three springs in the area by name: le solfuree di Triverno, l’ acidola di S. Ianni and la ferrata di Pratella. He notes that Pliny mentions the waters of Venafranum but Sannicola does not state which spring Pliny was referring to although one would think, since Pliny claimed the spring arose ex fonte acidulo that Sannicola meant l’acidola di S. Ianni.[ref]Giovanni Sannicola, Poche Parole sulla Citta di Venafro (Naples, 1845) 7-8, 8n1. Sannicola should certainly have been quite familiar with all the springs in the region around Venafro since he mentions a couple of his texts — Memoria sulle Acque minerali di Venafro and Idrologia Medica dell Regno — in which he goes into more detail on these springs. This last text may be the same as his Idrologia minerale del regno delle Due Sicilie (Palermo, 1847), mentioned in a biographical account. See Marra 185. Unfortunately none of these texts is listed in WorldCat.[/ref]

Following Sannicola there was a lot of confusion about which spring was which. What had been simply le solfuree, for Sannicola had now become le solfuree di Triverno with no mention of Cotugno’s other acqua di Triverno. Instead Sannicola introduces a new spring l’ acidola di S. Ianni. Perhaps by l’ acidola di S. Janni, Sannicola was referring to Cotugno’s Acqua di Triverno. Indeed adopting the name “S. Janni” could be seen as a Christianization of Janara. And Cotugno noted how Acqua di Triverno dissolved carbonate of lime, a property long associated with acidola.

However Sannicola described this acidola in his writings, he must not have been very clear because no later writer ever precisely locates it. Indeed, later general works on mineral waters drop completely le solfuree di Triverno and address only S. Ianni on which they say Sannicola and Pilla disagreed, Sannicola claiming S. Ianni was acqua acidula while Pilla claiming it was sulfurea.[ref]”Intorno Alle Acque Minerali Delle Provincie Napoletane,” De’ Lavori Accademici (Napoli, 1866) 167; “Venafro”, Dizionario Universale Topografico Storico Fisico-Chimico Terapeutico, comp. Antonio Perone (Napoli: Angelo Trani, 1870) 1104-5.[/ref] Guglielmo Jervis in his Guida alla Acque Minerali dell’Italia Centrale (1876) claimed l’Acqua acidula di San Jannio was four kilometers from the village of Venafro “toward Sesto Campano and Triverno” which is a pretty hard thing to accomplish since Sesto Campano lies on the road south of Venafro and Triverno to the east![ref]Gulglielmo Jervis, Guida alla Acque Minerali dell’Italia Centrale (Roma: Ermanno Loescher, 1876) 97-8.[/ref]

Today there is no doubt what spring Bacci, Pilla, Cotugno, and Sannicola were referring to as le sulfuree. The Strada Comunale Acqua Solfa runs south from Strada Statale 85 at Taverna Triverno to a complex of buildings close to a bend in the Volturno just on the Molise side of the Molise-Campania border.[ref]maps.google.com[/ref]

But as far as locating Pliny’s Venafrum spring, there is one major problem. Pliny clearly described the Venafro spring as acidula, not sulphurata. So do we have the wrong spring? Was Pliny referring perhaps to Sannicola’s mysterious “l’ acidola di S. Ianni”? Did Pliny have the name of the town wrong? Did Romans not recognize any difference between sulphurata and acidula? Or did Pliny or his informant simply misidentify the Venafrum spring as acidula? Or has the spring near the Taverna Triverno changed from acidula to sulphurata in almost two thousand years? Obviously a lot of questions about which we can only offer a brief speculation here.

Sulfurous waters

Of all the mineral waters through the ages, the one that attracted the most attention was sulfurous water. Some of the most famous medicinal waters were acknowledged over and over again to be sulfurous. Sulfurous waters are fairly easy to identify today. One thinks immediately of the smell of rotten eggs associated with such famous modern sulphurous waters as those at Yellowstone, Lassen, etc. It is also common knowledge today that it is hydrogen sulphide which caused that rotten egg smell, a highly toxic gas. The human nose is highly sensitive to very low concentrations of hydrogen sulphide.

Similarly Romans going back at least to Virgil associated sulfurous waters with a mephitic, bad or foul smell (Verg. A. 7.81). Vitruvius described both the waters of the river Albula on the road to Tivoli, and the cold springs of Ardea which had the same smell and were called sulphur springs, and other such waters as all tainted by passing through burning places deep down in the lower strata of the earth and subsequently cooled by running a long distance through the upper strata of the earth until they emerged with their taste, smell, and color spoiled (Vitr. 8.3.2).

However, none of these descriptions of mephitic, bad, foul, etc., smells make it absolutely certain that this smell was due to hydrogen sulfide. No classical writer as far as can be determined ever actually associated any mineral water with the smell of rotten eggs as we would today. The earliest reference to this particular smell is actually in Agricola and he did not particularly associate the smell with sulfur. Thus it is not absolutely certain that the smell associated with the modern Venafro spring would have clearly identified these water as sulfurous in classical times.

To be fair, recognizing any connection between the mineral sulfur and the rotten egg smell of hydrogen sulfide is not readily obvious. Indeed, it would seem that the easiest way to identify a sulfurous smell would be to claim the waters smelled like the light yellow solid that we call sulfur today. But elemental sulfur is odorless and tasteless.[ref]http://www.georgiagulfsulfur.com/properties.htm[/ref] More commonly the smell of sulphur in ancient times was associated with burning sulfur which produces various oxides of sulfur, especially sulphur dioxide. We are actually quite familiar with the smell of sulphur dioxide as the predominant smell when firecrackers are set off, which we might also recognize as mephitic, bad, or foul.[ref]http://www.aerias.org/DesktopModules/ArticleDetail.aspx?articleId=143[/ref] However sulfur dioxide is not typically identified with mineral waters because the gas tends to go into solution and form sulfate ions.

Yet even if the Romans never referred to a rotten egg smell, there is little doubt that the smell they thought was mephitic, foul, or bad, was hydrogen sulfide. Indeed the only gases associated with mineral waters that might be classified as mephitic, bad, or foul today is hydrogen sulfide. All the other gases that come off hot springs are completely odorless, e.g., carbon dioxide, methane, oxygen, nitrogen. Thus we might imagine that the Romans would have identified the spring near modern Venafro as sulfurous due to its rotten-egg smell.

Not that smell was the main way that Romans identified sulphurous springs. Indeed, more than smell, Romans seemed to have been struck by the milky blue waters of the most famous sulphurous springs.

Ancient Name	Modern Name	References
Aquae Albulae[ref]Strabo, The Geography of Strabo, trans. H. C. Hamilton and W. Falconer, 3 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohm, 1854) 1: 354n1; T. Ashby, “The Classical Topography of the Roman Campagna, Part II, Papers of the British School at Rome, Vol. III, No. 1 (London, 1905) 117-119; “Albulae Aquae,” The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910) 1: 513; “Aquae Albulae,” http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Tivoli/Bagni_di_Tivoli/Roman/Britannica_1911*.html; http://www.tibursuperbum.it/ita/escursioni/acquealbule/UbicazioneCaratteristiche.htm[/ref]	Bagni di Tivoli	Vitr. 8.3.2, Pliny, Seneca, Strabo, Martial
Aquae Labanae[ref]Strabo, The Geography of Strabo, trans. H. C. Hamilton and W. Falconer, 3 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohm, 1854) 1: 354n2; “Aquae Labanae”, “Eretum”, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, illustrated by numerous engravings on wood. William Smith, LLD. London. Walton and Maberly, Upper Gower Street and Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row; John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1854.[/ref]	Bagni di Grotta Marozza	Strab. 5.3
Ardea[ref]Cramer 2: 25-6; Charles Anthon, A Classical Dictionary: Containing an Account of the Principal Proper Names mentioned in Ancient Authors (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1848) 182; “Ardea”, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, illustrated by numerous engravings on wood. William Smith, LLD. London. Walton and Maberly, Upper Gower Street and Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row; John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1854.[/ref]	La Solforata	Vitr. 8.3.2
Nera	Nar	Verg. A. 7.511
Albunae[ref]Uncertain location. Albunea has been associated with both Albula and Ardea. See, e.g., “Albula”, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, illustrated by numerous engravings on wood. William Smith, LLD. London. Walton and Maberly, Upper Gower Street and Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row; John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1854.[/ref]		Verg. A. 7.83
Baiae	Baiae	Pliny

Table 5 lists the most famous classical waters that were deemed by one author or another to be sulphurous. In their search to identify as much as they could about the places mentioned in classical writings, nineteenth-century antiquarians scoured the Italian countryside in an attempt to identify the locations of these famous ancient bodies of waters. Of course, as we have seen, identification of classical springs is never a certain thing. Descriptions are vague. Things change. Some like Virgil’s Albunae have never been precisely located.

Hydrogeology of Central Italy

However, a little understanding of the hydrogeology of central Italy can lead us to an understanding of the nature of these sulfurous waters over time even if it is difficult to pinpoint exactly the location of the ancient springs.

In central Italy there are in general three kinds of springs:[ref]S. Nisio, G. Caramanna, and G. Ciotoli, “Sinkholes in Italy: first results on the inventory and analysis”, Natural and Anthropogenic Hazards in Karst Areas: Recognition, Analysis and Mitigation, Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 279, eds. M. Parise and J. Gunn (London: The Geological Society of London, 2007) 23-45, esp. 37.[/ref]

(1) shallow aquifers and surface water distinguished by low values of total dissolved solids

(2) deep aquifer water distinguished by higher values of total dissolved solids

(3) highly mineralized waters due to the mixing of deep aquifer water with CO2 and H2S.

The main ion concentrations present in deep aquifer water are calcium and bicarbonate ions due to the dissolution of the calcareous bedrock (comprised mainly of limestone with some dolomite) as ground water, with the help of some atmospheric CO2 that filters through it. The dissolution of the limestone (CaCO3) explains the parity of Ca2+ and HCO3- ions in most of the deep aquifer water in central Italy. The presence of Mg2+ ions in some ground water is due mostly to dissolution of dolomite CaMg(CO3)2. Because of the significant presence of Ca2+ and Mg2+ ions, the deep aquifer water in central Italy is characterized as “hard water” which is good for drinking, bathing, and all ordinary purposes water is used for.[ref]Petitta 166-7.[/ref]

The CO2 and H2S in the highly mineralized waters originate in several places:

(a) closer to the surface due to organic processes

(b) deep in the crust from the subduction of limestone (mostly applies to CO2)[ref]Large amounts of CO2 are generated in the central Apennines deep in the earth’s crust as the result of plate tectonics as the ??? limestone of the ??? plate plunges under the ??? plate since the Late Miocene.[/ref]

(c) the mantle

Whether from deep in the crust or the mantle, CO2 and H2S escaped to the deep aquifer through fractures and faults. These waters become very acidic due to the high levels of CO2 and H2S as dissolved and free gas which causes faster dissolution of limestone-dolomite but also silicates and other minerals, like iron-bearing minerals that give rise to waters that contain significant levels of iron like Le Caldarelle and Ferrarelle.[ref]Nisio et al. (2007) 29, 42-43; S.E. Beaubien et al., “Potential Hazards of CO2 Leakage in Storage Systems — Learning from Natural Systems”. On ferruginous waters, see S. Nisio, G. Caramanna, and G. Ciotoli, “Sinkholes in Italy: first results on the inventory and analysis”, Natural and Anthropogenic Hazards in Karst Areas: Recognition, Analysis and Mitigation, Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 279, eds. M. Parise and J. Gunn (London: The Geological Society of London, 2007) 23-45, esp. 37; Ernesto Centamore, Stefania Nisio, and David Rossi, “The San Vittorino Sinkhole Plain: relationships between bedrock structure, sinking processes, seismis events and hydrothermal springs”, Ital. J. Geosci. (Boll. Soc. Geol. It.) 128 (3) (2009) 1-11, esp. 8; Marco Petitta, “Hydrogeology of the Middle Valley of the Velino River and of the S. Vittorino Plain (Rieti, Central Italy)”, Italian Journal of Engineering Geology and Environment 1 (2009) 157-181, esp. 163, 177.[/ref]

So would an area like that around Venafro which today produces a major sulfurous spring have been likely to have produced a non-sulfurous spring in the time of Pliny? The odds are no. The area around the fault – which very likely would have been the site of any highly carbonated spring associated with Venafrum – has been a major center for deep mineralized water for thousands of year as can be judged by the presence of substantial travertine deposits.[ref]Nisio et al. (2007) 43.[/ref] (See Fig. 10 and Fig. 11 Sketch of groundwater circulation in the S. Vittorino Plain showing how deep gaseous up-lift occurs along fault lines.[ref]Petitta 176-177.[/ref])

Indeed, when examining evidence of sulphurous springs, both ancient and modern, it is amazing that so many springs can continue to flow with minimal change for thousands of year in pretty much the same spot and pretty much the same chemistry. Any Roman who had visited the sanctuary of Mephitis at Ampsanctus made famous by Virgil would have not soon forgotten the rotten-egg smell coming from the sulfurous spring, a smell which was perhaps the exact same smell that Romans like Virgil and Pliny meant by mephitis. They would have also seem the deposits of yellowish elemental sulfur near the spring outlet.[ref]”Mephitis”, L&S; “Mephitis”, William Smith. A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. London. John Murray: printed by Spottiswoode and Co., New-Street Square and Parliament Street. In the article on Soranus, we find: “at this present time (1848)” and this date seems to reflect the dates of works cited. 1873 – probably the printing date; “Ampsancti”, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, illustrated by numerous engravings on wood. William Smith, LLD. London. Walton and Maberly, Upper Gower Street and Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row; John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1854; “Ampsanctus”, “Rossano di Vaglio”, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, eds. Richard Stillwell, William L. MacDonald, William L. McAlister, and Marian Holland (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mefitis; http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mefite; http://www.irpinia.info/sito/towns/roccasanfelice/mefite.htm; http://www.sanniti.info/mefite.html; http://www.e-irpinia.it/contents/espl/espl1/espl1_6.html; http://www.earth-prints.org/handle/2122/6050; The Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c. for the eyar 1831 (London, 1831) 777.[/ref]

Aquae Albulae was the classic sulphurous spring and continues strong today. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century commentators often noted the sulphureous stink at Aquae Albulae. Today, reduced to three small lakes called Bagni di Tivoli, the waters are still classified as a sulphurous waters. Using Aquae Albulae as the model of sulphurous waters, observers recognized that other springs were similar. Vitruvius pointed out that Albulae and Ardea were quite similar. Strabo did the same for Albulae and Labanae. Modern studies show that in these comparisons these Roman observers were actually quite accurate.

And of the most famous sulphurous springs that can still be identified with some confidence, they all still partake not just in a milky blue color but also the strong smell of rotten eggs. Indeed, scientists have demonstrated that the hydrogen sulfide which causes the rotten-egg smell is also the force behind the milky blue color as hydrogen sulfide is oxidized into microgranules of elemental sulfur dispersed and suspended in the water.[ref]http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=19143; Scarla J. Weeks, “Satellite Identification of Hydrogen Sulphide Emissions,” horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/…/010031805.pdf; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_sulfide; tp://www.scindependent.com/articles/2007/10/25/local/dstory.txt[/ref] [The middle section of this chapter covering (1) the characteristics of sulphurous waters (e.g., mephitic smell, milkiness) and going into details on classical springs associated with the Nar River (modern Nera), Albunea, Albula, Patavium, Colli Euganei, Ardea, and Labanae and (2) the search for Vitruvius’ third acidula and a discussion of the characteristics of petrifying and travertine springs has been, for the time, cut because this section had not been edited yet.]

Tampering with Nature

The ancient Romans (like the Greeks before them) almost certainly recognized as acidulae carbonated waters with no H2S and not so mineralized as to be petrifying. But one question left unresolved is whether the Romans would have categorized a spring with significant levels of iron as acidulae. Overall it seems highly unlikely.

We have already seen in Chapter 2 that early modern writers often saw irony and sour waters as compatible as in Spa waters. Indeed Pliny’s fountain as defined by Agricola was the classic water combining both an irony and sour taste. And one can see where Agricola is coming from. Anyone who has tasted highly carbonated irony waters for the first time has experienced the double sensation of the initial pleasant taste due to the carbonation followed quite shortly by the far less pleasant taste due to the iron. But in many ways Agricola and northern European writers celebrating their Saurbrunnen were making a virtue of necessity because almost all of their highly carbonated waters had significant levels of iron.

The point is that even in Agricola’s time, observers recognized that two distinct tastes were involved and they never would have equated the sour taste with the iron taste. The same is true for the ancient Romans. They were surely familiar with carbonated waters with significant levels of iron which were quite commonplace in central Italy and did not seem to arouse much if any in the way of interest (and which were perhaps the waters they called aqua ferrata/ferrea). But, by calling a spring acidula, they were stating that the waters tasted acida. There was no mixed taste. It was just acida. And the only springs that would have caused that sensation would have been highly carbonated waters with insignificant levels of iron. It would seem that for the ancient Romans, as well as the Greeks, sour waters only had a sour taste with no irony taste.

In order to understand the fascination that a spring like Francolise or Xino Nero might have had for the ancients, one has to understand how rare indeed it is to find such springs in nature. Today on the shelves of grocery stores we can find many “naturally carbonated waters” and must come to think that there are many springs that produce such waters naturally. However by EU conventions bottlers who proclaim their water “naturally carbonated” can do quite a bit to the waters to manipulate the mineral and gas content. First, they can completely strip the spring water of its carbon dioxide. After processing they can add the carbon dioxide back to the water and as long as the carbon dioxide comes from the same reservoir and the bottlers don’t add more carbon dioxide that was originally contained in the water they can proclaim it “naturally carbonated”. If the carbon dioxide comes from some other reservoir all they can claim is that it is “carbonated”.[ref]https://www.gerolsteiner.de/en/water-knowledge/water-lexicon/natural-carbonation/[/ref]

After stripping the water of carbon dioxide, EU regulations then permit producers of “naturally carbonated waters” to remove any iron, manganese, arsenic, and sulfur in the water by using ozone treatment. Ozone oxidizes the soluble ions of these metals/minerals (including H2S) converting them to an insoluble oxide that can be filtered out of the water. Regulations allow the removal of toxic arsenic and manganese for health reasons. But the removal of the iron and sulfur is strictly for aesthetic reasons, simply because any rotten-egg smell and particles of elemental sulfur and ferric oxides/hydroxides floating around in the water and settling to the bottom are considered unsightly and a deterrent to sales. In the final analysis, though, bottlers whose carbonated water is highly sulfurous and irony are allowed the pretense that their waters are just as natural as Xino Nero or Francolise.[ref]http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32003L0040:en:NOT; https://www.gerolsteiner.de/en/water-knowledge/water-lexicon/natural-carbonation/; Nicholas Dege, “Categories of Bottled Water”, Technology of Bottled Water, ed. Nicholas Dege, 3rd ed. (Greenwich, Conn.: Nestle Waters North America, 2011) 33- .[/ref]

Throughout Europe, highly carbonated natural spring waters with neither iron nor hydrogen sulfide are quite rare. During the heyday of Spa waters, the only highly carbonated water celebrated for being lightly mineralized with no sulfur or iron was Selters in Germany, better known to the English as Seltzer water.[ref]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selters_(Taunus)[/ref] In central Italy, along with the Francolise spring there are actually very few highly carbonated waters with no significant iron or H2S. Andrea Bacci mentioned the Aquae Anticoli in Campania which today goes by the name Fiuggi.[ref]Baccio 389; Angelo Galli, Cenni economico-statistici: sullo stato pontificio con appendice (Roma, 1840) 146; “Acque Minerali”, Nuova Enciclopedia di Chimica Scientifica, Tecnologica e Industriale, ??? vols., ed. Icilio Guareschi (Torino: Unione Tipografico-Editrice, 1901) 3: 389; http://www.lifeinitaly.com/tourism/lazio/fiuggi-thermal-baths[/ref] One could also mention l’acque di Triflisco in the village of Bellona.[ref]”Bellona”, Dizionario Universale Topografico Storico Fisico-Chimico Terapeutico, comp. Antonio Perone (Napoli: Angelo Trani, 1870) 202-203.[/ref]

Limited Influence of Vitruvius

If Pliny and Vitruvius did indeed draw upon some common writer for their three acidulae, it is almost certain that the original source discussed the acidulae in the context of curing urinary calculi. However, it is not at all clear that this common writer would have discussed the virtues of these waters to cure urinary calculi within the context of the power of vinegar to break stones, let alone the other marvellous powers of vinegar as Vitruvius did. Certainly, whether Pliny picked up his ideas about the three acidulae from Vitruvius, Posidonius, or some other writer, he does not assert any suggestion of a connection between acidulae and the powers of vinegar. Indeed no writer before Agricola seems to have picked up on Vitruvius’ hypothesis. If any earlier writer made such a connection between acidulae and vinegar before Vitruvius, there is no trace of it.

No classical writer even makes the suggestion that “sour” or “sharp” substances had the ability to cure urinary calculi. It seems that if acidus, acerbus, or acer fruits or other substances would have been considered good for dispersing the stone, surely Pliny would have included it. Pliny was apt to list every possible medicinal value to every fruit, vegetable, animal, or water he had possibly ever heard of. But he does not anywhere associate any acidus, acerbus, or acer substance with breaking or dispersing urinary calculi. (On herbs traditionally treated as sour, see below.)

Vinegar was frequently used in the preparation of various other medicines but no one claimed that it had the power to break up urinary calculi. This despite the fact that Pliny offers his own very similar analogy for the herb empetros, which the people of the country called calcifraga (“calculus-breaking”). Pliny noted that calcifraga grew on mountains near the sea and was generally found upon rocks. “Used fresh, either boiled in water or pounded, it acts as a diuretic, and disperses urinary calculi. Authorities who wish full credence to be given to this asserted property, assure us that pebbles boiled with it will split asunder.” (Plin. Nat. 27.51).[ref]As with ios siderou, we can presume that Dioscorides got his ideas about empetros from Sextius Niger, because Dioscorides has a quite similar entry. Dioscorides identified a shrub called saxifraga (“rock-breaking”) which he noted grew on rocks and in rough places, cured stones in the bladder, and was also called empetrum. See Dioscorides 559-60. There has been a lot of confusion over whether the name saxifraga referred to the ability of the herb to break and urinary calculi or the observation that the shrub grew on rocks. Pliny explicitly noted that another plant adiantum was called saxifrage, not because of its growing on rocks, but because of its “singular efficacy in expelling and breaking calculi of the bladder.” See Pliny Nat. Hist. 22:30. One recent work on saxifrages suggests the association of saxifrages as a cure for urinary calculi was due to the kidney-shaped leaves and small bulbils that grow along the base of a certain grassland species. See David Allardice Webb and R. J. Gornall, Saxifrages of Europe: with notes on African, American and some Asiatic species (Christopher Helm, 1989) 19. See also “Saxifrage,” OED; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxifraga.[/ref]

Agricola & Juices

Agricola is quite clearly beholden to Theophrastus, Vitruvius, Pliny, and possibly Aristotle for his ideas about acidulae. Agricola follows Theophrastus in asserting that the juices in the earth belonging to fluids (discussed above) arise from the same necessary causes as in plants. However, on the subject of the connection between mineral juices and plant juices, Agricola seems to be treading somewhere between Aristotle, Vitruvius, and Theophrastus. Aristotle wrote that all the flavors that are found in plants can be found in the earth. Similarly Vitruvius claimed that the juices that cause mineral waters to taste different are also behind the different tastes of fruits and plants.

Both Agricola and Theophrastus believe that Aristotle’s view ignores the fact that there are some juices unique to the plant world. Theophrastus specifically mentioned that the αὐστηρός and δριμύς tastes (which Agricola translates as austerus and acris) and “several more” do not appear in fluids coming from the earth. Agricola felt that Theophrastus did not quite have it right. While Agricola accepted that austerus and acerbus tastes were only found in plants, he asserted that all the other tastes (including acris) were found in the earth.[ref]Cf. Theophrastus, DCP 6.3.4; Agricola (1612) 28-9.[/ref]

Agricola seems most beholden to Pliny for his taste framework. To Pliny’s list of ten simple tastes, Agricola dropped two (acutus, suavis) and added one (astringentis).[ref]Agricola (1612) 28-9; Plin. Nat. 15.35.[/ref] Since Pliny mentioned “the three acidulae” in the context of waters which were curative of urinary calculi, it is possible that Agricola may also have gotten his ideas about acidulae being good for diseases of the stone from Pliny as well.

However, one cannot find any evidence in Pliny to suggest it is BECAUSE of the acidulous nature of the “three springs” that they are able to cure diseases of the stones. Furthermore, only two (or three by Agricola count) of the total of seven waters good for treating urinary calculi are identified as acidula by Pliny. (Agricola himself does not identify any of the other four waters as acidulae.) In addition, Pliny and Agricola both describe the Lyncestis spring as acidula but Pliny makes no claims that this water is good for treating urinary calculi. Pliny furthermore gives no hint that acidus or acidulus substances, any more than acidulus waters, have any particular medicinal value due to their sourness.

It is possible that Agricola got his reference to the acidulae of Sicily and Macedonia near Lyncestis from Aristotle’s Meteorologica (see above). Pliny also describes the Lyncestis spring as acidula and mentions in two places that salso-acida waters were found in the deserts and among the springs at Baiae (English Plin. Nat. 31.2, 31.22). Agricola also refers to salty waters passing through soils which this acidus juice that springs which are both salty and sour arise.[ref]Agricola (1612) 83-4, 344-5; Agricola, De Natura Fossilium 7-8.[/ref] But the fact that Pliny makes no mention of a Sicilian acidula (although he was certainly familiar with Sicania) and both Agricola and Aristotle mention these springs one after the other, suggests that Agricola was drawing on Aristotle here.[ref]On Sicania, see Plin. Nat. 3.14.[/ref] But, if Agricola was indeed drawing on Aristotle, one wonders why Agricola would not have referred to Sicana rather than just Sicilia. Indeed, Agricola was much more specific that even the classical writers in locating the other four classical acidulae, for example, mentioning that Lyncestis was in Macedonia. Furthermore, one wonders why Agricola would not have referred more specifically to salso-acida waters which was the most striking feature of these waters as far as Aristotle was concerned. As for the ability to break stones, etc., Aristotle has nothing to say about the medicinal virtues of sour waters.

Overall the influence of Theophrastus, Pliny, and Aristotle seems to pale in comparison to that of Vitruvius. It is true that Agricola does not mention Vitruvius’ third acidulae. However, it is possible the confusion over the name might have been enough to steer Agricola away from mentioning this third spring.

That Vitruvius would have a significant impact on Agricola is not surprising. If Vitruvius was fairly ignored in classical times, that was not the case in Agricola’s time.

Vitruvius’ De Architectura was rediscovered in the early 15th century and had a great impact on Renaissance artists and architects like Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72), Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519), Michelangelo (1475-1564), and Andrea Palladio (1508-1580). His detailed description of the ideal proportions of the human body as drawn by Da Vinci inscribed in the circle and square will be forever celebrated as the Vitruvian Man.[ref]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvius; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_architectura; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_Man[/ref]

Thus, one could see Agricola’s interest in Vitruvius as part of a general Vitruvian Renaissance. However, Vitruvius’ ideas on mineral waters, in contrast to his ideas on art and architecture, had very little impact on Renaissance writers. Indeed there was very little interest in a Theophrastean approach to mineral waters in general, the identification of waters within a classical taste framework, or classical writings about acidae/acidulae in general in the Renaissance until the work of Agricola. If Vitruvius’s ideas on aqua acidae had little impact on Pliny and other classical writers, they appear to have had just as limited influence on Renaissance-era writers, despite Vitruvius’ great celebrity.

Beyond the Vitruvian Renaissance, one can understand the particular interest that Vitruvius might have had for Agricola. Vitruvius had the kind of analytical mind that went beyond Pliny. Pliny was an encyclopedist, Vitruvius was an engineer. Vitruvius went about his task far more like Agricola went about his fifteen centuries later, combining the best of earlier knowledge with his own observations and insights (Vitr. 8.3). Both were working within an overall Theophrastean framework centered on the idea of “juices”. What Theophrastus called χυμοὶ, both Vitruvius and Agricola called succi.

References to Vitruvius suggest that Agricola trusted Vitruvius as a source. He cited Vitruvius by name in the Bermannus and highlighted both Vitruvius and Pliny in his works on mineral waters as Roman writers who had written on waters.[ref]Agricola (1612) 166, 168, 169, 872, 916.[/ref] In addition, there are a dozen or so further direct references to Vitruvius in Agricola’s writings.[ref]Agricola, De Re Metallica (1657) 528, 529-532, 535-6, 542, 556, 566, 685, 696-8; De Natura Fossilum, ed. Bandy and Bandy, p. vi, 30-1, 57, 108, 157, 160, 164-5, 199, 219, 223.[/ref]

Agricola explicitly acknowledges Vitruvius in several passages taken from Chapter 8, Section 3 of De Architectura, the same section in which Vitruvius goes into depth on aqua acida and other mineral waters. Agricola mentions Vitruvius by name in discussing the way that the hot springs at Hierapolis become incrusted in stone[ref]Cf. Vitr. 8.3.10; Agricola (1612) 101.[/ref]; the lake in India that emits oil when the sky is clear[ref]Cf. Vitr. 8.3.8; Agricola (1612) 191.[/ref]; the river Himera in Sicily with divides into two branches on which acquires a salty taste because it combines with the salty waters of Selinunte[ref]Cf. Vitr. 8.3.7; Agricola (1612) 193. Actually all Vitruvius says is that the branch has a salt taste because it runs through a country where there are salt pits, so Agricola must have drawn upon some other source for his knowledge of Selinunte (Selina in Latin).[/ref]; and the tribe of the Medulli who have a water that causes swelling of the throat.[ref]Cf. Vitr. 8.3.20; Agricola (1612) 222.[/ref]

Thus there is no doubt that Agricola was familiar with the passage in Vitruvius about acidulae and their ability to cure stones. Furthermore, one imagines that Agricola would very much have appreciated Vitruvius’s logic, going far beyond simply asserting that sour waters could break stone to prove the point with analogies to the similar effects of vinegar on pearls, stones, copper, lead, etc. The fact that Agricola does not explicitly credit Vitruvius in his discussion of acidulae or mention Vitruvius’ third acidulae does not seem so important. In other passages Agricola does not mention Vitruvius by name but does clearly seem to draw on him. One can see this in Agricola’s treatment of the medicinal virtues of bituminous waters.[ref]Cf. bituminosi autem interioris corporis vitia potionibus purgando solent mederi (Vitr. 8.3) and At bituminosae potae interioribus corporum vitijs medentur (Agricola, De Natura Eorum (1612) 220-1).[/ref] As for the third acidulae, whatever manuscript that Agricola had access most likely referred to the third acidula as “uienna” and he may very well have suspected, like later editors, that this was incorrect.

Nevertheless, Agricola goes well beyond Vitruvius, taking the idea of juices much further than any classical writer. Indeed, for Agricola, it is ONLY through juices that minerals and metals impart their taste, smells, medicinal virtues, etc., to water. Any color, taste, or odor that water gets, it gets from juices.[ref]Agricola, De Re Metallica 52n.[/ref] According to Agricola these juices are “either made when dry substances immersed in moisture are cooked by heat, or else they are made when water flows over ‘earth,’ or when the surrounding moisture corrodes metallic material; or else they are forced out of the ground by the power of heat alone.”[ref]Agricola, De Re Metallica 49n.[/ref]

Furthermore, Agricola introduces an important new category of “fossil” he called concretus succus (“concrete juice”) which was the solid form of the juices that were found in mineral waters, including sulfur, alumen, bitumen, aerugo, ferrugo, sal, nitrum, atramentum sutorium, and a host of other minerals. By “fossil” Agricola meant all solid substances that found under the ground, under which he included four kinds of simple fossil bodies — earths, concrete juices, stones, and metals.[ref]Agricola, De Natura Fossilium 17. See also Agricola, De Re Metallica 807.[/ref]

It is not clear exactly how many different kinds of juices Agricola believed there were circulating in the earth. Agricola attempted to synthesize the classical mineral water framework of Archigenes discussed in the previous chapter with the classical taste framework of Democritus et al. Some of the classic tastes had no classical mineral water counterpart while some of the classical mineral waters had no classical taste. Listed below are basic categories of water to which Agricola devotes most of his attention.

Table 7

Agricola’s Juice-Taste Correspondence[ref]For Hot/Cold and Moist/Dry, see atramentum (Avicenna 257); alumen (Avicenna 264); nitrum (Mesue ??); sal (Avicenna 376); sulphur (Avicenna 376); and bitumen Iudaicum (Avicenna 274). On dulcis, mel (“honey”) (Avicenna 346) was used on the logic that Agricola compares the sweet taste of the stone he calls mellitis to honey. See Agricola, De Natura Fossilium, pp. 88-89. On ferratae, see Table 2 and associated text in Chapter 4. For purgative, see ferratae (Fumanelli ??); salsae (Mesue ??); nitrosae (Mesue ??). For the properties of acidae/acidulae, see below. For acrimonia, see below.[/ref]

Aquae	Liquidus succus	Concretus succus	Sapor	Acri-monia	Hot/Cold	Moist/Dry	Purgative
dulcis	dulcis	mellititis	dulcis	no	H2	D2
sulfurosae	sulfurosus	sulfur	(malus)	no	H	D
aluminosae	aluminosus	alumen	acerbus	yes	H3	D3
bituminosae	bituminosus	bitumen	pinguis (malus)	no	H3	D3	Yes (Pliny,Vitruvius)
aeratae	aeratus	aerugo		no
ferratae	ferratus	ferrugo	ferrugineus	no	C2/3	D3	Yes(Fumanelli)
salsae	salsus	sal	salsus	yes	H2	D2	Yes(Pseudo-Mesue)
nitrosae	nitrosus	nitrum	amarus	yes	H3	D3	Yes (Pliny, Vitruvius,Pseudo-Mesue)
atramentosae	acerbus/astringens	atramentum sutorium, etc.	astringentus & acer	yes	H3	D3
acidae/acidulae	acidus/acidulus	N/A	acidus	yes	C		No

Agricola seems to desire a one-to-one correspondence between his seven basic tastes (Table 7) and types of mineral waters but he also recognized that each taste was also distinct. Agricola mentions seven basic tastes of springs which emanate from the earth: aqua dulcis, pinguis, salsus, amarus, acidus, astringentis, acris.[ref]Agricola (1612) 28-30.[/ref] But how does one then account for the ferrugineus taste of aquae ferratae and other waters which reflect the uniqueness of taste of particular minerals. Agricola does at least attempt to describe the taste of these particular minerals, noting for example that ferrugo is just as astringent as atramentum sutorium but less corrosive.[ref]Agricola, De Natura Fossilium 56.[/ref] He also notes that some minerals have a mixed or confused taste, like atramentum sutorium and related species which have both an astringent and acrid taste.[ref]Agricola (1612) 345; Agricola, De Natura Fossilium 7-8.[/ref]

Acidus/acidulus juice

What is more important for present purposes, however, is that Agricola does not note a concrete form of the acidus/acidulus juice. Indeed he asserts that of his nine basic tastes (see Table 2), three are exceptional in not being associated with any mineral: austerus, acerbus, and acidus. As we have already seen Agricola claims that austerus and acerbus are restricted to plants. But of the other seven that are found in mineral waters, only acidus is a taste not associated with any particular mineral. He does acknowledge, however, that some earths acquire an acidus taste by absorbing an acidus juice. It is from salty waters passing through soils containing this acidus juice that Aristotle and Pliny’s salso-acida springs arise.[ref]Agricola (1612) 83-4, 344-5; Agricola, De Natura Fossilium 7-8.[/ref]

Agricola actually seems to follow Vitruvius closely in attributing the direct cause of the ability of aquae acidae to break stones to the water’s acrimonia. As we have already noted, Vitruvius claimed that aquae acidae had the power of dissolving that with which they came in contact, including urinary calculi. He asserted that aquae acida got their qualities from “a SHARP and sour juice” and it was the SHARPNESS of these aquae acidae that actually was responsible for the dissolving, not the sourness of the waters. Agricola does not come out bluntly and say that acidulae are acrid, but he does seem to recognize that strongly sour substances are acrid and that it is the acridity of juices that gives them their corrosive powers. Agricola speaks of acrimonia whereas Vitruvius speaks of acritudo, although both terms seem synonymous, meaning essentially “sharpness.”[ref]”Acer”, “acrimonia”, “acritudo”, L&S.[/ref]

Agricola includes vinegar among the genus of acrid minerals. Agricola brings this up in the context of the inability of acrid substances like vinegar, salt, natron, and the juice squeezed from unripe grapes (i.e., verjuice) to dissolve gold.[ref]Agricola (1612) 667.[/ref] Although acrid juices could not dissolve gold, they were otherwise quite corrosive. For instance, a lodestone immersed in acrid juices lost its power to pick up iron.[ref]Agricola (1612) 340; Agricola, De Natura Fossilium 5.[/ref] The acri succo concreto which usually produces cadmia was so acrid that it could eat walls and even destroy all living matter.[ref]Agricola (1612) 445; Agricola, De Natura Fossilium 51.[/ref]

Following in the footsteps of Vitruvius, Agricola must have seen sour waters as something akin to acetum (“vinegar”) upon which Vitruvius had modeled his understanding of aquae acidae. Agricola does not mention in his works vinegar’s ability to dissolve stones but he does mention, like Vitruvius, that aerugo, caeruleum, and cerussa (white lead) are produced by treating metals with vinegar, processes earlier described by Theophrastus.[ref]Cf. Theophrastus, On Stones 57, 187-193.[/ref] However, Agricola seems to hedge on attributing these powers to the “sharpness” of vinegar. For example, he notes that not just vinegar, but old wine can convert copper into aerugo, which might suggest that Agricola believed it was the “sourness” of vinegar and old wine that gave them this power.[ref]Agricola, De Natura Fossilium 196-7. See Agricola (1612) 719-20. See Agricola, De Re Metallica 440n. Cf. Pliny, see Plin. Nat. 34.26.[/ref] Elsewhere Agricola explicitly states that any strongly sour juice (succus, vehementer acidus) can accomplish the same thing.[ref]Agricola (1612) 92. See Agricola (1657) 512. See also Agricola, De Natura Fossilium 56n29.[/ref]

Although Agricola does not explicitly attribute the ability to break stones to the acrimonia of vinegar or aquae acidae, what he seems to have intended is that acrimonia is the property of substances that allows certain substance to break stones, convert copper into aerugo, etc. The important point though is that, for Agricola, acrimonia is not a property strictly of acrid juices. Rather many different juices possess the property of acrimonia, including succus salsus, nitrosus, aluminosus, atramentosus, as well as acidus/acidulus. (See Table 7.) Thus just as a succus, vehementer acidus turns copper into aerugo, a salty and sour moisture (salsus & acidus humor) gnaws away at metallic material. The presumption is that both salty and sour juices possess acrimonia.[ref]Agricola (1612) 92.[/ref] Theoretically all of these juices would have the ability to break stones. Indeed, as we will see in the next chapter, contemporaries of Agricola believed that aluminous and atramentous waters had the ability to break stones.

Cooling Heat?

So if all these different kinds of waters would possess acrimonia to some degree or another, how could Agricola claim that waters that broke stones had to be acidus? Recall that Agricola is not saying that sour juices are the only juices that have the ability to break stones, just as he was not saying that acidulae were the only waters that could cure urinary calculi. Rather what he is saying is that sour juices are the only juices that have the ability to both break stones and reduce fever.

For this cooling property of acidulae, indeed for all the medicinal virtues that Agricola claims for acidulae apart from its ability to break stones, Agricola was going far beyond the classical literature just as he went beyond classical knowledge of aquae ferratae. The classical literature has practically nothing to say about the medicinal of acidula beyond Vitruvius’ suggestion of its ability to cure urinary calculi. Thus no classical writer ever claimed that acidulae could reduce fever, stimulate urine, or dissipate drunkenness. Indeed, as Agricola notes, Pliny claimed that the acidula of Lyncestis was actually quite famous for its ability to intoxicate like wine, strongly conflicting with Agricola’s notion that acidulae dissipate drunkenness.

Thus, in support of the claim that sour juices were the only juices that could both break stones and reduce fever, one might note that, according to Avicenna, all the other concrete juices possessing acrimonia are both hot and dry, and as hot substances they would not reduce fevers. On the other hand, sour substances like vinegar and sour wine had long been recognized as cold substances. Numerous Greek writers from Hippocrates to Dioscorides to Plutarch to Galen held vinegar to be cooling. Pliny claimed that vinegar possessed cooling properties in the very highest degree.[ref]Plin. Nat. 23.23; Dsc. 5.13; Plutarch’s Morals, ed. William W. Goodwin, Vol. III (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874) 272-4. See also Grant 288.[/ref]

Sobering Effect

As for the sobering effect of acidulae, Agricola would seem to have his hands full trying to justify this. Besides Pliny, the intoxicating power of Lyncestis was mentioned by Pythagoras, Aristotle, Ovid, Seneca, among others. Certainly intoxication was the most prominent feature of the Lyncestis spring in classical literature, far more prominent than its acidulous quality mentioned only by Aristotle, Vitruvius, and Pliny.[ref]James Reuel Smith, Springs and Wells in Greek and Roman Literature Their Legends and Locations (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1922) 263; Prudence J. Jones, Reading Rivers in Roman Literature and Culture (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005) 15. See, e.g., Seneca 133-4; Ovid, The Metamorphoses, trans. Henry T. Riley (Digireads.com, 2009) 300.[/ref] If Agricola was building his understanding of acidulous waters strictly on classical sources, he would hardly have insisted that acidulous waters cure drunkenness. Wouldn’t it have been easier to make Lyncestis the rule rather than an exception?[ref]Georgii Agricolæ, De natura eorum, quæ effluunt ex terra, Libri quatuor (Wittebergæ, 1612) 217.[/ref]

So where did Agricola get his ideas about the virtues of these sour juices? It appears that, just as Vitruvius had generalized from vinegar to aqua acida, Agricola generalized from other sour substances to acidulae. Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Vitruvius had all asserted that the sour juice in certain fruit was essentially the same as the sour juice in the ground and in water. Agricola simply extended basic ideas about the medicinal virtues of sour juices to acidulae. And for his insights into these medicinal virtues, Agricola seems to be drawing heavily in particular on a highly popular pharmacopoeia that was known as the Grabadin, or under the full title of Antidotarium sive Grabadin medicamentorum.

Pseudo-Mesue

Modern scholars have been quite perplexed over who the author of the Grabadin was. Since the earliest appearance of the text in Latin in the 13th-century, the presumed author was a writer that went by the name of Joannes filius Mesue filii Hamech filii Hali filii Abdela regis Damasci (“John the son of Mesue, the son of Ahmed, the son of Ali, the son of Abdallah, King of Damascus”).[ref]www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/…/pdf/brmedj08930-0014.pdf[/ref] The presumption was that he was the son of the famous Abbasid physician Abu-Zakariyya Yuhanna ibn Masawayh (c.777-857) who was known in the West as Mesue. To distinguish the two the father was referred to as Mesue the Elder and the author of the Grabadin was called Mesue the Younger, Joannes Mesue of Damascus, or some variant of these names.[ref]On Mesue the Elder, see Plinio Prioreschi, A History of Medicine, Vol. IV — Byzantine and Islamic Medicine (Omaha: Horatius Press, 2004) 213-214; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masawaiyh[/ref]

Then there was the story, propagated by Leo Africanus writing in the mid-16th century that he was Yuhanna ibn Masawayh al-Mardini (926-1016), a Jacobite Christian, born in Iraq and working in Baghdad before he entered the service of the Egyptian Chaliph al-Hakim until his death in Cairo at the age of ninety years old.[ref]R. J. Forbes, A Short History of the Art of Distillation (1948; Leiden: Brill, 1970) 41; George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, Baltimore, Williams & Wilkins, 3 Vols. (in five), 1927-1948, I, p. 728; Teresa Huguet-Termes, “Islamic Pharmacology and Pharmacy in the Latin West: An Approach to Early Pharmacopoeias,” European Review 16 (2) (2008) 229-239, esp. 232-233, http://digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/37654/1/Teresa-Huguet-1998-Islamic….pdf; Cyril Elgood, A Medical History of Persia and the Eastern Caliphate (1951; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 93; Prioreschi 290; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masawaih_al-Mardini; http://www.columbia.edu/dlc/garland/deweever/D/damascie.htm; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbal; http://www.wdl.org/en/item/7386/[/ref] However, modern scholars have not been able to find any evidence to corroborate Leo Africanus that this Joannes Mesue of Damascus ever existed. None of the titles associated with Mesue the Younger including the Grabadin have ever been found in the presumed Arabic original and no Arabic writer ever refers to such a person.

This lack of evidence of his existence has led many scholars to believe that Leo Africanus’ account was pure fiction and indeed that Mesue the Younger was a pseudonym for a later European author who wrote strictly in Latin. Thus they refer to the author of the Grabadin as Pseudo-Mesue. The most accepted hypothesis is that the Grabadin was the work of a 12th-century Italian without any Arabic original.[ref]Donald Campbell, Arabian Medicine and its Influence on the Middle Ages, 2 vols. (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1926) 1: 77; Elgood 93-4; Rev. De Grabadin van Pseudo-Mesues (XIe-XIIe eeuw) en zijn invloed op de ontwikkeling van de farmacie in de Zuidelijk Nederlanden, by L. J. Vandewiele, Revue d’histoire de la pharmacie 50 (1962) 294-5; Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Vol. 5, Pt. 3 (1976; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 238n.[/ref]

Regardless of who was the author of the Grabadin, the text became one the most popular pharmacopoeia in the early Renaissance and its popularity remained strong well into the 16th century. What Avicenna was for simples, the Grabadin was for compound medicines. There were numerous commentaries, beginning with Peter de Abano. First printed in 1471, the Grabadin went through numerous editions in Latin and Italian, and continued to influence pharmacopoeias well into the early modern era.[ref]A. C. Wootton, Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1910) 218; Cyril Elgood, A Medical History of Persia and the Eastern Caliphate (1951; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 93.[/ref] As a physician, Agricola would certainly have been familiar with the Grabadin as a standard part of the curriculum of medical training in Renaissance Europe.

The Grabadin goes into much more detail than any ealier text on the medicinal virtues of particular tastes. For present purposes, the most important feature of the Grabadin is that it associated various sour potions with the particular medicinal virtues that Agricola claimed for acidulae. Although Pseudo-Mesue makes no specific claim for the power of sour potions to dissolve urinary calculi (which we see Agricola most likely got from Vitruvius), he did associate sour potions with the ability to reduce heat, move urine, and end intoxication that Agricola claims for acidulous waters. And, apart from later texts that merely copy Pseudo-Mesue, the Grabadin appears to be the only text that makes such claims.

In a general discussion of different tastes, pseudo-Mesuë lists most of the same tastes that Pliny had much earlier outlined but he goes into much more detail on the general medicinal virtues of each taste. Mesue discusses the following tastes: acre, amarum, salsum, unctuosum, dulce, acidum, stypticum, and insipidum. (See Table 2.)[ref]Ioannis Mesuae Damasceni, De Re Medica, Libri Tres, trans. Iacobo Sylvio (Paris, 1542) 6.[/ref]

Mesue suggests acidi in general possess a sharp substance that strikes which would seem to be consistent with Vitruvius’ idea.

Acidum penetrat, aperit, incidit, dividit, tenuat, terget, densat, asperat, extinguit calorem, cito agit, haec opera: sed in medio valentium, & imbecillium est: denique substantia tenui acre obtundit, dulci & insipidio vigorem addit.[ref]Ioannis Mesuae Damasceni, De Re Medica, Libri Tres, trans. Iacobo Sylvio (Paris, 1542) 6.[/ref]

Sour penetrates, opens, cuts into, divides, thins, cleanses, thickens, sharpens, quenches heat, acts quickly, this works: but is in the middle strong, & weak: furthermore possesses a substance sharp that strikes, sweet & insipid invigorates in addition.

Pseudo-Mesue also goes into elaborate detail on the medicinal virtues of numerous potions that he would surely categorize as acidi.

Table 8

Sour Compound Medicines[ref]Ioannis Mesuae Damasceni, De Re Medica, Libri Tres, trans. Iacobo Sylvio (Paris, 1542) 140-174.[/ref]

Succus granatorum acidorum

Succus granatorum acidodulcium

Succus acidus citrorum

Succus cydoniorum acidorum

Syrupus de granatis acidis

Syrupus ex succo citri acido

Syrupus acetosus simplex

Syrupus acidus ex prunis

Syrupus acidus de pomis

Syrupus acidus ex cydoniis

Syrupus acidus de succis fructuum

Syrupus acidus de succis & aquis fructuum

Syruous acidus ex manna

Syrupus acetatus simplex

Syrupus acetatus cum radicibus

Syrupus acetatus de succis herbarum

Syrupus acetatus diarhodon

Syrupus acetatus de succis herbarum cum aromatibus

Syrupus acetatus

Oxymeli

Oxymeli de radicibus

Oxymeli ex ligustico

Oxymeli ex calaminthe

Acetum scillinum

Oxymeli scilliticum

Oxymel scilliticum de radicibus

Oxymeli scilliticum Democritii

Oxysacchorum simplex

One of the juices on which pseudo-Mesuë draws in particular he calls succo citri acido. In the 19th century, succus citri will become the scientific name for lime juice, but in the 15th century, succus citri acido referred to the sour juice of the citron. We have already mentioned that Pliny described the taste of the citron as asperrimus. Pseudo-Mesuë claimed that the sour juice of the citron is good for yellow bile and the fever caused by it, the internal organs out of which phlegm is born, quenches flaming heat and severe thirst, resists intoxication, helps dizziness, and indeed pestilential fever.[ref]Ioannis Mesuae Damasceni, De Re Medica, Libri Tres, trans. Iacobo Sylvio (Paris, 1542) 151.[/ref] He also claims that the sour syrup made out of the juice or water of sour plums, sour pomegranates, Indian tamarinds, sour citrons, and sugar, cooked slowly over fire, settles great thirst, hot intemperance of internal parts with fever, & without fever quenches, & stops intoxication, & dizziness, & vomiting, and cures trembling of the heart & heart failure.[ref]Ioannis Mesuae Damasceni, De Re Medica, Libri Tres, trans. Iacobo Sylvio (Paris, 1542) 156.[/ref] Indeed, the only potion that Martin Ruland notes is good for intoxication, citing Pseudo-Mesue.[ref]Martin Ruland, Medicine Practica Recens et Nova (1564) 20.a.[/ref]

Pseudo-Mesue also reported that oxymel — a preparation made from water, vinegar and honey — was good for moving urine, an idea actually going back at least to Galen.[ref]Ioannis Mesuae Damasceni, De Re Medica, Libri Tres, trans. Iacobo Sylvio (Paris, 1542) 168-71; Matthew Wood, The Earthwise Herbal: A Complete Guide to Old World Medicinal Plants (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2008) 529-30.[/ref] Jacques Dubois in his commentary on Mesue’s “Syrupus acetatus simplex” (seemingly combining vinegar and sugar rather than honey) adds “Affectibus biliosis saluber, quia bilem tenuitate & caliditate furiosam frangit, crassat, extinguit : humores autem crassos tenuat, incidit, obstructiones aperit, urinas mouet ac sudores.”[ref]Mesue (1542) 162.[/ref] Leonhart Fuchs, citing Mesue, refers to Serapium acidum simplex (which he distinguishes from oxymelo simplex) which he says helps extinguish fevers born out of bile as well as thirst, removed obstructions, moved urine, opposed putrefaction, and evoked sweat.[ref]Fuchs (1541) 447; Fuchs (1550) 365.a.-366.a.[/ref] Martin Ruland notes that oxymel simplex, besides provoking urine, also breaks calculi. Ruland does not cite any authority for this claim although it would seem like a logical extension from the ideas of Vitruvius.[ref]Martin Ruland, Medicine Practica Recens et Nova (1564) 20.a., 75.a.[/ref]

In addition, one notes that the Grabadin does not associate any of these sour potions with the ability to purge which Pliny claimed for Tungri waters and which Agricola claimed must be due to some other quality of the water.[ref]Ruland has no listing for any of these “sour” substances under “Purgatio”. See Martin Ruland, Medicine Practica Recens et Nova (1564) 50.a.-51.a.[/ref]

Similar Language

Indeed the language that Pseudo-Mesue uses to describe these virtues is uncannily like that employed by Agricola. For acidi in general, Mesue’s phrase extinguit calorem strikes one as quite similar to Agricola’s calorem restinguere. For oxymeli de radicibus, Mesue’s phrase urinam movet is quite similar to Agricola’s urinam potae movent. And for syrupus ex succo citri acido (“syrup from the juice of the sour citron”), Mesue’s phrase ebrietati resistit seems much like Agricola’s ebrietatem discutiunt.[ref]Ioannis Mesuae Damasceni, De Re Medica, Libri Tres, ed. Iacobo Sylvio (Paris, 1542) 6, 151, 169-70.[/ref]

The family resemblance of these phrases, of course, does not prove that Agricola drew on the Grabadin. Agricola no more cites Mesue in his list of authorities than he cited Fumanelli on aqua ferrata. The fact that the particular virtues that Agricola focuses on seem randomly picked from possible virtue sshould also give us pause. However, we have already seen how Agricola seems to have picked and chosen among the particular medicinal virtues associated with aqua ferrea so this approach to dealing with medicinal virtues seems to have been part of his general pattern. Agricola did not look at his job as attempting any comprehensive account of contemporary scholarship on the medicinal virtues of his subterranea. He was far more interested in what the ancients rather than the moderns had to say about these virtues and would only mention medicinal virtues that perhaps he found the most plausible, perhaps based on his own personal medical training or experience as a physician.

Just as with aqua ferrata, Agricola chose what he wanted from the classical literature and expanded upon it drawing upon later knowledge. Thus he got the medicinal virtues of aqua ferrata from later medical writers like Avicenna although some of these virtues like the ability of aqua ferrata to cure problems of the spleen date back to classical sources.

The same applies to acidulous waters. There is no association between acidulous waters and curing fevers in general or tertian fever in particular in classical times as far as I can find. Agricola did not seem to get this idea of acidulous waters reduced fever directly from any classical source. And this, as we have seen, was not because there was no interest in curing tertian fever.

But if Agricola was indeed drawing upon Pseudo-Mesue to link the medicinal virtues of acidulae with the sour juices found in citron and other fruits, it is highly likely that Agricola was thinking in Aristotelian-Theophrastean-Vitruvian terms. Acidulous waters were sour because of the sour juices in the earth, the same sour juices that were alternately taken up by certain plants and ended up concentrated in the vinegar and sour fruits like citrons, pomegranates, apples, grapes, etc. The juices that were used to prepare sour juices and syrups were for Agricola the same juices that were mixed with earths, the same that were absorbed by the roots of plants, the same that mixed with waters that flowed over the surface of the earth and made up acidulous waters.

Curing Tertian Fever and Diseases of the Stones

As to whether Agricola interpreted Pliny’s tertianas febres discutit calculorumque vitia correctly in equating curing tertian fever with reducing heat and curing diseases of the stones with breaking stones, it is anybody’s guess.

Pliny’s failure to mentions Vitruvius’ ideas on the power of acetum to break urinary calculi was not because of lack of interest in identifying new cures for urinary calculi. Indeed, as we have seen above, there was an intense interest in ancient Rome in cures for kidney and bladder stones. As Pliny himself notes, bladder stones in his time were considered the MOST painful of all illnesses.

In ancient Rome, a calculus was a “small stone,” a diminutive of calx, meaning “stone.” Such small stones were used as counters in playing draughts, in voting, and were also used in reckoning on the abacus or counting board,” whence the origins of the term calculus of Newton and Leipzig. But it was also used as a generic term for concretions the developed in the human body, in particular in the kidneys (renal calculus) and bladder (vesical calculus).[ref]”Calculus,” OED.[/ref]

In his treatise On Air, Waters and Places, Hippocrates described his theory of the causes of calculous disease which was widely accepted until the time of Paracelsus.

Men become affected with the stone and are seized with diseases of the kidneys, stranguary, sciatica and become ruptured when they drink all sorts of waters….There must by deposits of sand and mud in the vessels from such waters, and the aforesaid diseases must be engendered by them when drunk, but why not to all I will now explain. When the bowels are loose and in a healthy state, and when the bladder is not hot, nor the neck of the bladder very contracted, all such persons pass water freely, and no concretion forms in the bladder; but those in whom the belly is hot, the bladder must be in the same condition; and when preternaturally heated, its neck becomes inflamed; and when these things happen, the bladder does not expel the urine but raises its heat excessively. And the thinnest part of it is excreted, and the purest part is passed off in the form of urine, but the thickest and most turbid part is condensed and concreted, at first in small quantity, but afterwards in greater; for being rolled about in the urine, whatever is of a thick consistence coalesces, and thus it increases and becomes indurated. And when such persons make water, the stone forced down by the urine, falls into the neck of the bladder and stops the urine and occasions intense pain.[ref]Ernest Desnos, “The History of Urology to the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century,” The History of Urology, trans. and ed. Leonard J.T. Murphy (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1972) 20-1.[/ref]

As Pliny himself notes, bladder stones in his time were considered the MOST painful of all illnesses.

[I]n taking a review of which one cannot do otherwise than bewail the unhappy lot of mankind, subject as it is, in addition to chances and changes, and those new afflictions which every hour is bringing with it, to thousands of diseases which menace the existence of each mortal being. It would seem almost an act of folly to attempt to determine which of these diseases is attended with the most excruciating pain, seeing that every one is of opinion that the malady with which for the moment he himself is afflicted, is the most excruciating and insupportable. The general experience, however, of the present age has come to the conclusion, that the most agonizing torments are those attendant upon strangury, resulting from calculi in the bladder; next to them, those arising from maladies of the stomach; and in the third place, those caused by pains and affections of the head; for it is more generally in these cases, we find, and not in others, that patients are tempted to commit suicide. (Plin. Nat. 25.7)

Although painful, bladder stones and kidney stones do not strike as much fear in modern readers as they did in ancient Romans. Removing these stones is a rather simple and straightforward medical procedure today. It was not so in ancient times. Any surgery which pierced the bladder was considered a death sentence. That may have been why Hippocrates included in his famous oath the pledge that “I will not cut persons labouring under the stone but will leave this to be done by practitioners of this work.”[ref]Desnos 21.[/ref]

After the death of Hippocrates, the center of medical knowledge moved to Alexandria where Ammonius of Alexandria (b. 276 BC) developed a procedure for splitting or shattering the calculus with a hook and thin blunt instrument while it was still in the bladder to make its extraction easier without the necessity of cutting the bladder itself. As a result Ammonius earned the nickname lithotomus (Λιθοτόμος) which originally referred to cutting the stone. Only later to “lithotomy” come to mean cutting for the stone.[ref]Desnos 22-23.[/ref]

After the fall of Greece to the Romans, the center of medical knowedge once again moved, this time to Rome where procedures for dealing with urinary calculi continued to evolve. For the treatment of the stone at the time of Pliny, we are fortunate to have a quite detailed account in the writings of Celsus. Celsus actually described a surgical procedure for cutting into the neck of the bladder to extract the stone, but he made it clear that this operation was very dangerous and was only suitable for a boy between the ages of 9-14 inclusive and only as a last resort. Celsus goes on to detail the procedure for dealing with different kinds of stones (e.g., sandy stones), Ammonius’ techniques of breaking stones that are too large to extract without tearing the neck of the bladder, and modifications for dealing with female patients.[ref]Celsus 428-441; Desnos 24-5. See also V. Nutton, “The Perils of Patriotism: Pliny and Roman Medicine,” Science in the Early Roman Empire: Pliny the Elder, his Sources and Influence, eds. Roger French and Frank Greenaway (London: Croom Helm, 1986) 42.[/ref]

Because of the dangers and difficulties associated with lithotomy, from ancient times physicians scoured the plant, animal, and mineral world on the lookout for medicines that could obviate the necessity of cutting the bladder.[ref]Ralph Jackson, “Waters and Spas in the Classical World,” The Medical History of Waters and Spas, Medical History, Supplement No. 10, ed. Roy Porter (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1990) 4-5.[/ref] The Greeks drew much of their medicinal knowledge from Egypt and Mesopotamia, as well as adding their own observations from the natural world. Much of this ancient knowledge was summarized in the independent works of Dioscorides and Pliny, which because of the close similarity we might presume once again that both were drawing on Sextius Niger.[ref]Maeble 57; Desnos 25; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbal[/ref]

In our discussion of the ability of the water of Lake Velinus to cure stones, we have already addressed Pliny’s argument by analogy of various stone-like substances for breaking bladder stones. Pliny by a different kind of analogy also attributed this power to saxifrage, a shrub known to grow on rocky ground by “breaking” its way through stones.[ref]Maeble 57; Desnos 25.[/ref] In addition Pliny also mentions several plant and animal sources that were capable of “breaking” the stone with no clear analogy. Among the herbs were radish (20:13), parsley (20:44), tribulus (22:12), nettle (22:15), adiantum (22:30), adicula (24:58), lithosperum, and phalaris (27:102). Among animal products with lithontriptic properties, Pliny only mentions earth-worms (30:21) and boiled snails (30:21).

Pliny also mentions all kinds of other “cures” for urinary calculi which may or may not be the kind of action that Vitruvius had in mind. (See Table 9.)

Table 9

Pliny’s “Other” Cures for Urinary Calculi

Effect	Substance
“remedial”	ferret’s genitals (11:109); garden lapathum (20:86); bramble (24:74)
“recommended”	butcher’s broom (21:100); betony/vervain/milfoil (26:49)
“disengaging”	asparagus (20:42)
“dispersing”	pennyroyal (20:54); anise (20:73); mustard [in vinegar] (20:87); anthemis (22:26); heliotropium (22:29); sium (22:41); root of laurel (23:80); gramen (24:118); calcifraga (27:51); river-crabs (32.31); lyncurium (37:31)
“expelling”	olasatrum (20:46), wild sisymbrium (20:91), cultivated fennel (20:96), hippomarathron (20:96), cypiros/cyperos (21:69-70), glycyrrhiza (22:11), arietinum (22:72), ebulum (26:49), vervain (26:55), anthemis (26:55), root of erratic apple (26:56), sea-nettle (26:56), daucus (26:56), seed of plantago (26:49, 26:56); kidneys of hare (28:60); excrescences that grow on horses’ legs (28:60); ashes of horses’ hoof (28:60); dung of she-goat (28:60); goat’s hair reduced to ashes (28:60); egg white (29:11); empty shells of snails (30:21); liver of water-snake (30:21); ashes of burnt scorpions (30:21); small grits in gizzard of poultry or craw of ringdove/poultry (30:21)
“removing”	bacchar (21:77)
“good for”	parthenium (21:104); bitter almond (23:75)
“highly beneficial”	trychnon (21:105)
“used/taken/prescribed for”	asphodel (22:32); cotyledon (26:49); artemisia (26:49); dung of ring-dove (30:21); ashes of ring-doves feathers (30:21); intestines of ring-doves reduced to ashes (30:21); a small clod from a swallow’s nest dissolved in warm water (30:21); the dried crop of an ossifrage (30:21); the dung of a turtle-dove boiled in honied wine (30:21); the broth of a boiled turtle-dove (30:21)
“carries off”	sonchos (22:44)
“highly efficacious”	palimonies (26:49), agaric (26:49)
curative	liver of the hyena (28.27); mouse-dung rubbed on abdomen (30:21); flesh of hedgehog killed with a single blow upon the head (30:21); sea scorpion, liver of the enhydris, ashes of the fish called “blendius”
“treated with”	bladder of wild boar, sea urchins
“very useful”	sea-nettle (32.32); pulmo marinus (32.32)

In all this there is nary a mention of the power of vinegar or “sour” substance to cure urinary calculi, even while Pliny notes most of the other actions that Vitruvius associates with vinegar (including the power to break rocks) and accepts the claim that certain acidulae cure the stone. That no other classical writer, indeed no other writer period, suggests that vinegar could cure urinary calculi, adds more support to the idea that Agricola was drawing on Vitruvius for his ideas about acidulae breaking urinary calculi.

As to whether Agricola is justified in equating Pliny’s assertion that Tungri waters cure diseases of stones with the power to break stones that would seem a bit of a stretch. Many of Pliny’s remedies for “curing” urinary calculi surely have nothing to do with breaking stones. However, Agricola, as interested as he was in the medicinal virtues of the juices of plants, might not have had any interest in cures that had seemingly nothing to do with juices. And since his focus was strictly on subterranean substance, he really does not deal with claims for plant and animal substances. In the final analysis, the best way to make sense of Agricola’s assertion (i.e., that Pliny must have meant the power to break stones) is that Agricola assumed that the only thing that mineral waters could do to “cure” urinary calculi is to break the stones and it is the acrid nature of certain kinds of juices in mineral waters that give certain mineral waters this power.

Tertian Fever

But what about tertian fever? Pliny does state that vinegar was cooling to the highest degree, suggesting that Agricola might have been drawing upon Pliny’s treatment of vinegar for his understanding of acidula. But just as the power to break stones was not equivalent to curing urinary calculi, a cooling effect is not equivalent to Pliny’s claim that Tungri waters are curative of tertian fever.

Just as there was interest in cures for urinary calculi in Roman times, there was interest in cures for tertian fever. Greek and Roman physicians had noted that fevers were intermittent, with elevated temperatures followed by periods when the temperature would return to normal only to rise again some time later. If the fever had a periodicity of 24 hours, Romans called it quotidian fever; 48 hours, tertian fever; and 72 hours, quartan fever.[ref]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fever. For Plato’s description of these different types of fever, see Plat. Tim. 86a.[/ref] Thus tertian fever referred to a fever that would flare up every other day, which historians of medicine suggest was typical of the kind of intermittent fever one gets with certian kinds human malaria, in particular those caused by the genus Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax. Indeed, it is this tertian fever which readily distinguishes malaria from other diseases with otherwise similar symptoms like typhoid fever, hepatitus A, or influenza. Thus mentions of tertian fever in the classical literature have been generally interpreted as evidence of malaria.[ref]Robert Sallares, Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 9-11.[/ref]

Malaria was already a major problem in Rome by the beginning of the imperial period so, just as with urinary calculi, there was intense interest in finding cures.[ref]Sallares 13.[/ref] Pliny listed numerous plant and animal sources for curing tertian fever. Among the plant cures for tertian fevers that Pliny mentions were pennyroyal, coriander, agaric, sanguinaria (Plin. Nat. 20.54, 20.82, 26.71, 27.91). Many of the plant remedies were good for both tertian and quartan fevers but differed in involving the number “three” when dealing with tertian fever and the number “four” when dealing with quartan fever, like for cynoglossos, cinquefoil, vervain (Plin. Nat. 25.41, 26.71).

Pliny gets many of these remedies from Magi, by which most later commentators suspect he was referring to the Persian Magi that influenced Dioscorides and other, although often refers as well to magicians. Pliny’s attitude toward these Magi is a bit mixed. Sometimes he puts them down, some times states them with the same conviction he does other remedies. From the Magi, Pliny received recipes for anemone, parthenium, nettle, pseudoanchusa, heliotropium that required particular rituals to be effective. Again, for remedies that are useful for both tertian and quartan fevers, the rituals are slightly different for each (Plin. Nat. 21.94, 21.104, 22.16, 22.24, 22.29, 24.107).

Others of Pliny’s remedies strike the modern reader as distinctly superstitious.[ref] See also Plin. Nat. 28.9, 28.23, 31.47, 32.38.[/ref]

Any plant that is gathered before sunrise on the banks of a stream or river, due care being taken that no one sees it gathered, attached to the left arm without the patient knowing what it is, will cure a tertian fever, they say. (Plin. Nat. 24.107)

Some persons, again, mix water in equal proportions from three different wells, and, after making a libation with part of it in a new earthen vessel, administer the rest to patients suffering from tertian fever, when the paroxysms come on. (Plin. Nat. 28.11)

The magicians engage to cure a tertian fever, by attaching as an amulet to the patient, before sunrise, the eyes of river-crabs, the crabs when thus blinded being set at liberty in the water. (Plin. Nat. 32.38)

What is quite clear is that Pliny saw tertian fever as quite distinct from other fevers. Even though there is some connection between tertian and quartan fever, the same exact substance or ritual would not work.

Sometimes Pliny suggests a cure associated with other fevers might possibly work on tertian fever. For example,

In cases of tertian fever—so true it is that suffering takes delight in prolonging hope by trying every remedy—it may be worth while to make trial whether the web of the spider called lycos [the wolf spider] is of any use, applied, with the insect itself, to the temples and forehead in a compress covered with resin and wax; or the insect itself, attached to the body in a reed, a form in which it is said to be highly beneficial for other fevers. Trial may be made also of a green lizard, enclosed alive in a vessel just large enough to receive it, and worn as an amulet; a method, it is said, by which recurrent fevers are often dispelled. (Plin. Nat. 30.30)

But overall Pliny rarely suggested any connection between tertian fever and fever in general. He treats tertian fever as we might today treat malaria, well understanding that a cure for malaria is not the same as a cure for fever. Each form of fever was seen as a distinct “disease” to be treated.

Furthermore, among the cures for tertian fever, Pliny says absolutely nothing about any of his acidulae being able to do so. Indeed, Pliny does not claim any spring other than the Tungri spring can cure tertian fever, or any fever for that matter, acidulous or not. Thus Agricola does not seem to get his ideas about the ability of acidulous waters to reduce fevers from Pliny. Indeed there is absolutely nothing in the medical literature that Agricola might have drawn on that suggests that acidulae, vinegar, or other sour substances might be useful for curing tertian fever.[ref]The only cure for tertian fever listed by Martin Ruland was the Antidotus cathoica recommended by Nicholas Myrepsius. See Martin Ruland, Medicine Practica Recens et Nova (1564) 64.a.[/ref]

Of course, Agricola does not say that acidulae help cure tertian fever either. All he says is that acidulae help reduce heat. His assumption is that for Pliny fever was fever and all the water did was reduce the heat which any cooling substance might do. But surely Pliny meant a lot more than by saying Tungri waters cured tertian fever. There were many different kinds of fever and curing these different kinds of fever was a lot more than reducing heat. Otherwise why have all the different remedies for different kinds of fever? Thus it seems rather far-fetched for Agricola to claim that Tungri waters must be acidulous based on their ability to cure tertian fever. For Pliny and every other classical writer, tertian fever was something that required much more than a cooling substance.

But again Agricola’s thinking may have been that no other mineral water would be at all good for fevers. At least acidulae could reduce the heat associated with tertian fever, because after all it was still fever.

Ferrugineus Alternative

Even within Agricola’s own framework, the proof that Tungri waters must be aqua acida because acida are the only waters that can both quench heat and break stones seems rather weak. Agricola makes the case that other juices are present in the water. He explicitly states that ferrugo is present based on the ferrugineus taste. He states that because the Tungri waters are purgative there must also be some other juice present. (Although the last chapter suggested some connection between Antonio Fumanelli’s and Agricola’s work on aqua ferrata, Agricola seems to ignore Fumanelli’s claim that aqua ferrata was purgative.[ref]Antonio Fumanelli, Omnium febrium & dignoscendarum & curandarum absolutissima methodus. Ejusdem Consilium chirurgicum, de calvariae fractura, pectoris atque pulmonis vulnere, ac inflammatione. Historia et curandi ratio pro urinae reddendae difficult. & angustia. Item, An mineralis aqua urinae conveniat difficultati. In quibus omnibus totius artis medicae universalia ad particularium exercitationem, summo ejusdem candidatorum usu deducuntur. De balnei ferrati facultatibus, ferriq́ue natura. De balneis aquae simplicis. Omnia nunc primum in lucem edita (Basel, 1543) 232.[/ref])

But, as we have seen in the previous chapter, ferrugo and aqua ferrata were well known for being cooling. So if, as Agricola acknowleges, ferrugo is present that could account for the ability of Tungri waters to cure tertian fever by reducing heat without any reference to acida. As for the ability of Tungri waters to cure urinary calculi by breaking stones, any mineral water with suitable acrimonia could handle that. (See Table 4.) Thus, instead of aqua acida, Tungri waters could be a combination of aqua ferrata and either aqua aluminosa, salsa, nitrosa, or atramentosa. The one argument against this would be if the heating quality of the aluminosa, salsa, nitrosa, or atramentosa waters could be seen as overwhelming the cooling quality of aqua ferrata, in which case only aqua acida would work.

Possible first-hand knowledge

Overall, Agricola’s claim that the Tungri waters were acidulae appears rather tenuous resting on numerous unstated assumptions. And yet the confidence with which Agricola makes the claim that Tungri waters have to be acidulae suggests possibly that Agricola was drawing upon more than overly simplistic logic. It is as if Agricola were determined to find some “natural” explanation for why Tungri waters could cure urinary calculi and tertian fever. Indeed, such confidence suggests that there is something Agricola is not telling is. Could it be that Agricola was drawing on his own personal experience with Saurbrunnen that he found quite similar to Pliny’s description of Tungri waters?

One can imagine that as a doctor in St. Joachimsthal, his natural curiosity plus his interest in medicinal cures for his patients might have drawn him to the springs in western Bohemia, a region Agricola called Elbogano. Even in Agricola’s time, the springs near Egra, more popularly known as Franzensbad, were quite famous. And Franzensbad was only 70 kilometers from St. Joachimsthal, and on the way Agricola would have passed by the acidulae of Carolo Quarti (in Czech Karlovy Vary), Culma (Maria Culm or Kulm, in Czech Chlum Svaté Maří), and Egra.

While there is no explicit statement that Agricola visited any of the acidulae he mentions, his elaborate description of the springs at Egra (in Czech Cheb), which he calls insani (because their water boils although they are cold) and foriosa (because they boil with great noise, sounding like thunder), suggests possible first-hand knowledge. Agricola states that he learned that the acidulous spring was called insana from those who lived nearby, which suggests that he might have visited the spring himself.[ref]Agricola (1612) 233.[/ref]

Regardless of how Agricola learned of the Elbogano springs, it does not appear that Agricola let any personal observations affect his scientific understanding of acidulae. Thus he did not seem to see these the qualities of insani and foriosa as qualities of acidulae in general.[ref]Agricola (1612) 195.[/ref] This despite the fact that Pliny also described bubbles as one of the key features of the Tungri fountain, a feature the Agricola does not even discuss.

By the 17th century the Tungri features of innumerable bubbles, turning turbid and finally reddish will become accepted as key features of Sauerbrunnen but they do not appear to have been so in the 16th century. However, nowhere does Agricola generalize any of these other features of Tungri waters and to presume that he included any of the other features of Pliny’s fountain as part of his understanding of acidulae would be to read too much into Agricola. There is little evidence that Agricola drew upon any of the literature on Sauerbrunnen for his understanding of aqua acida. Rather it seems the other way around, that ideas about aqua acida influenced his understanding about Sauerbrunnen.

Limited Impact of Agricola

Agricola plays a very important role in establishing both that the classical acidulae and modern Sauerbrunnen were essentially the same kind of spring and that Tungri waters were acidulae. On these grounds, the supporters of Spa would have a powerful case to be Pliny’s fountain since Tongeren supporters make no claim for it being sour, as we have already seen in Chapter 2.

However, in the ultimate analysis, while there will be much attention to the Spa and Saurbrunnen in the following centuries, Agricola will not have much impact on the general understanding about the causes and medicinal virtues of Sauerbrunnen. No one will follow Agricola’s Aristotelian-Theophrastean-Vitruvian approach and his emphasis on sour juices will have negligible effect.

However natural it might seem to look analogies between sour juices and sour waters, Agricola’s approach was actually quite novel in the Renaissance. We can see this already in the different approaches of Agricola and Leonhart Fuchs to acidulous waters. Fuchs was certainly quite familiar with sour juices. In the same 1541 edition of Methodo where Fuchs recounts his two Sauerbrunnen, he also has an extensive analysis of sour juices and syrups in which he draws most heavily on Pseudo-Mesue.[ref]Fuchs (1541) 50, 447-450.[/ref] But the medicinal virtues of Fuchs’ sour juices have absolutely nothing in common with Fuchs’ acidulae which he says are good for sprained limbs, strengthening the belly, strengthening the liver, dropsy, jaundice, putrifying humors, volvulus, and worms. Wherever Fuchs got his ideas about Sauerbrunnen, they are distinctly different from Agricola’s and have absolutely nothing to do with sour juices. The distinctly different interpretations of two distinguished physician/scientists writing about the same time suggests there was not generally accepted ideas about Sauerbrunnen at this time.

Furthermore Agricola was out of step with a lot of intellectual currents in the Renaissance era. For example, Agricola eschewed analogies based on the macrocosm-microcosm relationship (the Neo-Platonic idea of seeing the same patterns reproduced in all levels of the cosmos from the largest to the smallest scale) and the doctrine of signatures (“herbs that resemble various parts of the body can be used to treat ailments of that part of the body”) which played a key role in much 16th-century and later scientific thinking.[ref]James A. Ruffner, “Agricola and community: cognition and response to the concept of coal,” Religion, science, and worldview: Essays in honor of Richard S. Westfall, eds. Margaret J. Osler and Paul Lawrence Farber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) 297-324, esp. 310-311, 310n40; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrocosm-microcosm; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_signatures[/ref]

Indeed, even at the time Agricola was writing in the 16th-century, the focus was already on the mineral origins of acidulae — in particular atramentum sutorium and alumen — something neither Agricola nor any earlier writer had explored. And the medicinal virtues of acidulae will be linked to virtues associated, not with the literature on sour juices as Agricola would have it, but with the particular minerals that were supposed to have given rise to the sour taste, as we will see in the next chapter.

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