South-West, which blow almost continually during the greatest
part of the year; but it is also subject to putrid vapours,
arising from the low marshy ground in the neighbourhood of the
harbour, which is every tide overflowed with seawater. This may
be one cause of the scrofula and rickets, which are two
prevailing disorders among the children in Boulogne. But I
believe the former is more owing to the water used in the Lower
Town, which is very hard and unwholsome. It curdles with soap,
gives a red colour to the meat that is boiled in it, and, when
drank by strangers, never fails to occasion pains in the stomach
and bowels; nay, sometimes produces dysenteries. In all
appearance it is impregnated with nitre, if not with something
more mischievous: we know that mundic, or pyrites, very often
contains a proportion of arsenic, mixed with sulphur, vitriol,
and mercury. Perhaps it partakes of the acid of some coal mine;
for there are coal works in this district. There is a well of
purging water within a quarter of a mile of the Upper Town, to
which the inhabitants resort in the morning, as the people of
London go to the Dog-and-duck, in St. George's fields. There is
likewise a fountain of excellent water, hard by the cathedral, in
the Upper Town, from whence I am daily supplied at a small
expence. Some modern chemists affirm, that no saline chalybeate
waters can exist, except in the neighbourhood of coal damps; and
that nothing can be more mild, and gentle, and friendly to the
constitution, than the said damps: but I know that the place
where I was bred stands upon a zonic of coal; that the water
which the inhabitants generally use is hard and brackish; and
that the people are remarkably subject to the king's evil and
consumption. These I would impute to the bad water, impregnated
with the vitriol and brine of coal, as there is nothing in the