Sir Gilbert Blane

“ The good effects resulting from the indulgent treatment of men are, that it encourages them to enter into the service, and to do their duty with cheerfulness and resolution. There is something more daunting to the mind of man to see his companions suffering under oppression and languishing in disease, or perishing miserably from sores or sickness, than in the terrors of fire and sword, which, as we have seen, make the least part of the calamities of war. The good treatment of seamen, in so far as it regards their health, is by no means incompatible with strict discipline. ”

“ It has appeared in the preceding part of this work, that the diseases most prevalent among seamen are fevers, fluxes, and the scurvy. These are indeed some of the most fatal that can attack the human body; but there is a numerous tribe of complaints, which are also some of the most severe scourges of human nature, from which they are in a manner entirely exempt.—These are the diseases to which the indolent and luxurious are subject, and which so far embitter their life as to render their portion of worldly enjoyment nearly on a level with that of the poor and laborious. ”

“ There is an endless variety in the constitution of the human frame, both in mind and body, as well as in the features of the face. There are, perhaps, no two individuals in the world in whom the same effect precisely is produced by the same food, air, medicine, poison, or passions of the mind. The different effects of infection, therefore, upon different people, seem to depend, in many cases, on peculiarities of constitution too obscure to be explained ”

“ Some officers are unwilling that any man should die on board of their ships, for fear of dispiriting the others; and many were sent to the hospital, in the most desperate stage of sickness, that they might there die.
There cannot be a stronger proof than this of the fallacy of judging of the success of practice by the proportion of the deaths; for the sick on this occasion were better accommodated, better provided for in every respect, and as regularly attended, as at any other period of my service in the West Indies, yet the mortality was greater than at any other time. ”

“ That the health of a ship’s company depends in a great measure upon means within our power, is strongly evinced by this, that different ships in the same situation of service enjoy very different degrees of health. Every one who has served in a great fleet must have remarked, that out of ships with the same complement of men, who have been the same length of time at sea, and have been victualled and watered in the same manner, some are extremely sickly, while others are free from disease. ”

“ Even the most common operations of the body, such as digestion and generation, when considered in their causes and modes of action, are so obscure and mysterious, as to be almost beyond the reach of rational conjecture. A little reflection will teach us the utmost modesty with regard to our knowledge of such things; for nature seems to have innumerable ways of working, particularly in the animal functions, to which neither our senses can extend, nor perhaps could our intellects comprehend them. ”

“ There are always numbers who have been pressed into the service, to whom a sea life is new, and who are therefore prone to indolence, low spirits, and self-neglect. Men of this description are by far the most apt to fall into the scurvy; and next to the quality of the food, there is nothing contributes more to promote the scurvy than such a disposition. It is indeed both a cause and a symptom of this disease, and therefore idleness and skulking should be rigidly discouraged, unless the complaint is so far advanced as to render it cruel and even impossible to force men to take exercise. ”

“ The quantity of muscular action employed in fighting at a great gun for a few hours, is perhaps more 103 that what is commonly employed in a week in the ordinary course of life, and though performed in the midst of heat and smoke, and generally with the want of food and drink, yet the powers of nature are not exhausted nor overstrained; even the smart of wounds is not felt; and the future health of those who survive unhurt by external violence is so far from being injured, that it is sometimes mended by this violent, but salutary agitation. ”

“ It is upon this principle that luxury renders the great quantities of food we take in necessary; and those species of food which satisfy most by their stimulus are by no means such as are the most nutritious. It is also upon this principle, that in cases of accidental hardship from want of food, or in barren and inclement countries where food is scarce, the body is supported, in some measure, by what contains little or no nutritious matter, such as pure water, or the bark of trees powdered and kneaded into a sort of bread, as we are told of the inhabitants of Lapland. ”

“ Under this head I shall not only consider the natural state of the air of the atmosphere in point of heat and cold, moisture and dryness, purity and corruption, but also the different artificial impregnations of it from the holds or other parts of a ship, or from the persons of men who have been neglected in point of cleanliness.
The common air of the atmosphere at sea is purer than on shore, which gives to a sea life a very great advantage over a life at land. ”

“ We have endeavoured to illustrate the great obscurity of its operation by an allusion to generation, digestion, and other animal functions, with which it is equally obscure and inexplicable. It is similar to generation in this, that its influence does not pass from one species of animal to another; for the poison of the plague, that of the small pox, that of fever, and the venereal disease, do not affect brutes47, nor do the infectious diseases of brutes affect different species of them, nor the human species. ”

“ The greater part of the food of a ship’s company is necessarily salted meat. Biscuit and pease, though of a vegetable nature, are hard of digestion; and though they qualify the animal food, they do not answer the purpose of fresh vegetables. Though officers have a supply of live stock even for the longest voyages, it would be impracticable to carry a quantity sufficient to preserve a whole crew from the scurvy. But certain articles have of late been introduced into use, of a durable and portable nature, which so qualify the salt provisions, that they can be used without inducing this disease. ”

“ This does not depend upon any thing peculiar to the climate; for I have known ships arrive without being visited with any sickness. It seems to be owing, for the most part, to that flock of infection and disease imported from Europe exerting its effects, and when this has spent itself, the men remain in good health, unless exposed to the land air or other accidents; for the air at sea in those climates, as well as every where else, is extremely pure and wholesome, and there is no where that seamen are more healthy or comfortable. ”

“ Though the air should not be cold, it will check perspiration by carrying off this vapour and drying the skin. In the warmest climates exposure of the skin to the external air is unsafe; for it not only produces a feverish and uneasy sensation at the time, but occasions the most dangerous internal disorders. In consequence of the great sensibility and sympathy of the body, and from the pores of the skin being open in a warm climate, exposure is in some respects even more dangerous than in a cold one. Nothing is more apt to bring on the locked jaw and tetanus than sleeping in the open air ”

“ There are other familiar and well-established facts, which prove, that either from 512 the influence of disease, from habits of life, or the nature of particular animals, life can go on for a length of time with little or no aliment. This is the case in fevers, in sea-sickness, in certain singular cases that have been recorded122, in torpid animals, and in animals of cold blood. Though a man in health will die if deprived of food for a very few days, it does not follow that this is owing to the want of matter to repair the waste of the body. ”

“ It commonly happens in a ship of war that a great proportion of the hands is landsmen; for, besides the men required to navigate the ship, a great number is necessary to fight the guns, as well as for other duties, and their health may be affected by the want of exercise.
It has been observed before, that one use of frequent reviews and musters in a numerous crew is, to call forth men that would otherwise be overlooked, to oblige them to come into the open air, to keep themselves clean, and to prevent them from indulging in filth and laziness. ”

“ The different stages which lead to dissolution following each other thus rapidly, there is not that gradual failure of the powers of nature that usually give warning of approaching death; but the springs of life run down, as it were, at once, the wretched sufferer expires, and is happily delivered from the most extreme misery of which human nature is capable. ”

“ Cold is favourable to infection, by preventing ventilation; for people exclude the air in order to keep themselves warm, and the poor in particular do so on account of their bad clothing, and their not being able to afford fuel to make good fires. Heat is the great destroyer of infection, and seems to act by evaporating, and thereby dissipating it; and the effect of fires in apartments is to produce a constant change of air, thereby preventing its stagnation and corruption, and the accumulation of unwholesome effluvia. ”

“ Short, that contagious epidemics are more frequent and fatal in the country than in London, and this may probably be accounted for on the same principle; for every person in a great town is exposed to the breath and effluvia of others, and to a variety of putrid exhalations, which are unavoidable where multitudes inhabit together; but they are so used to them, that they are not affected by them; whereas in the country, where people are less accustomed to each other’s company, and less used to impure air in general, they are the more readily affected when infection is introduced among them. ”

“ It is to be observed, in general, with regard to the West Indies, that ships on service are to be considered, in a great measure, in the light of ships constantly at sea; for, excepting the island of Barbadoes, there is no other port in which fresh meat and vegetables can be procured in any quantity, and therefore sour krout, melasses, and such other articles of antiscorbutic diet as can be supplied on board, are absolutely necessary. Fleets could hardly exist here, were it not that a warm climate is naturally more unfavourable to the scurvy than a cold one. ”

“ Cullen ascribes the low, nervous fever of Britain to a similar origin, being caused, as he thinks, by an infection of a milder kind, arising in the clothes and houses of the poor, who, from slovenliness or indigence, 238 neglect to change their linen, and air their houses.
Man is evidently more subject to disease than any other species of the animal creation, owing partly to the natural feebleness of his frame, but still more perhaps to the artificial modes of life which his reason leads him to adopt. There is no circumstance of this kind by which health is more affected than by clothing. ”

“ It is none of the least curious facts with regard to infection, that there are some species of it by which the body is liable to be affected only once in life. When this is considered, it is indeed conformable to what happens in the course of the disease itself; for, unless there was in the body a power of resisting it, there could be no such thing as recovery. Where the disease actually exists, the continued presence of the poison, which is also infinitely multiplied, would infallibly prove fatal in all cases, unless the living powers were to become insensible to it48. ”