The technique appears to have been neglected through the medieval period, because Georgius Agricola, writing in the 15th century in his De re metallica, does not mention hushing at all, although he does describe many other uses of water power, especially for washing ore and driving watermills. However, the technique was used on a large scale in the lead mines of northern Britain from at least Elizabethan times onwards. The method was described in some detail by Westgarth Forster in his book A Treatise on a Section of the Strata from Newcastle upon Tyne to the Mountain of Cross Fell in Cumberland (1809) and also in the 1842 Royal Commission on Children in Mines in relation to children being used in the lead mines of the Pennines.