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Abstract: From the sixteenth century through the mid twentieth century, doctors advised the use of the Acetosa water that flowed near Ponte Milvio to cure migraines, chest pain and skin infections with disgusting names. In other words, a water presumably having medicinal properties that was to be drunk while taking a walk, preferably between mid-May to mid-October, taking it directly from the spring to avoid that its content of carbon dioxide could become volatile too quickly. An analysis of the medicinal properties of the water might seem like a bizarre digression in a study of the architecture of the fountain of Acqua Acetosa; yet these indications (such as the advice of drinking it at its source to take full advantage of its beneficial properties, the method of drinking it, the suggestion to assume it in warm weather) provide a better understanding of one of the proposed projects for the fountain, the one constructed between 1661 and 1664 under the papacy of Alexander VII Chigi.