ENDNOTES Not a Drop to Drink: The Fountain of Youth and the Quest for Eternal Life
Where there were the old, the sick, and the dying, so too was there the myth of powerful water which could restore to health anyone who drank it. The lure of eternal life is a theme carried forward through works of literature and mythical tales, evolving and changing over the centuries.1 By the Middle Ages, the notion of magical rejuvenation took the form of water collected in a fountain, springing up throughout Eurasian mythologies.2 The Fountain of Youth bears connections to Indigenous and European legends, carrying throughout the continents on both sides of the Atlantic. By the sixteenth century, the myth of restorative waters had found its connections in the Americas through the account of the Spanish historian, Peter Martyr. Martyr claimed to have encountered a slave whose father had bathed in magical water in the Florida region.3 As a result, the claim was made that there was a discovery of a spring with magical properties in the Bahamas.4 One author in the 1300s, who went by the name of John Mandeville, offered an account of its discovery, though more fictionalized than factual. Briefly he provides a description of a supposed fountain discovered near a city called Polombe.5 Mandeville writes of the “well” at the base of a mountain from which “they that dwell there…never have sickness; and they seem always young.”6 As Mandeville’s and Martyr’s accounts drew focus to the Americas as a location for the legendary fountain, the drive for exploration of the Atlantic briefly shifted for those who sought eternal life rather than gold.7 Along with accounts of the Fountain of Youth came explorers seeking to obtain its restorative properties in the mysterious regions of the Americas. These explorers included Antonio de Herrera and, as commonly believed, Juan Ponce de León.8 Herrera insisted what many
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