Mineral and Thermal Groundwater Resources
Mineral and Thermal Groundwater Resources

Author: M. Albu

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 9401158460

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Is it not generally believed that our town is a healthy place . . . a place highly com mended on this score both for the sick andfor the healthy? . . And then these Baths - the so-called 'artery' of the town, or the 'nerve centre' . . . Do you know what they are in reality, these great and splendid and glorious Baths that have cost so much money? . . A most serious danger to health! All that filth up in Melledal, where there's such an awful stench - it's all seeping into the pipes that lead to the pump-room! Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People, 1882 Henrik Ibsen gave the 'truth about mineral water' more than 100 years ago in An Enemy of the People. His examples came not from the decadent bathing spas of Bohemia or Victorian Britain, but from the very edge of polite society, subarctic Norway! His masterpiece illustrates the central role that groundwaters and, in particular, mineral waters have played in the history of humanity: their economic importance for towns, their magnetism for pilgrims searching for cures, the political intrigues, the arguments over purported beneficent or maleficent health effects and, finally, their contami nation by anthropogenic activity, in Ibsen's case by wastes from a tannery. This book addresses the occurrence, properties and uses of mineral and thermal groundwaters. The use of these resources for heating, personal hygiene, curative and recreational purposes is deeply integrated in the history of civilization.

Leper Knights
Leper Knights

Author: David Marcombe

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0851158935

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One of the most unusual contributions to the crusading era was the idea of the leper knight - a response to the scourge of leprosy and the shortage of fighting men which beset the Latin kingdom in the twelfth century. The Order of St Lazarus, which saw the idea become a reality, founded establishments across Western Europe to provide essential support for its hospitaller and military vocations. This book explores the important contribution of the English branch of the order, which by 1300 managed a considerable estate from its chief preceptory at Burton Lazars in Leicestershire. Time proved the English Lazarites to be both tough and tenacious, if not always preoccupied with the care of lepers. Following the fall of Acre in 1291 they endured a period of bitter internal conflict, only to emerge reformed and reinvigorated in the fifteenth century. Though these late medieval knights were very different from their twelfth-century predecessors, some ideologies lingered on, though subtly readapted to the requirements of a new age, until the order was finally suppressed by Henry VIII in 1544. The modern refoundation of the order, a charitable institution, dates from 1962. The book uses both documentary and archaeological evidence to provide the first ever account of this little-understood crusading order.DAVID MARCOMBE is Director of the Centre for Local History, University of Nottingham.