Observations on the Diseases of Seamen

Nec Medici, nec Imperatores, nec Oratores, quamvis artis præcepta perceperint, quidquam magna laude dignum sine usu et excercitatione consequi possunt. Cicero.
SIR,
The following Work is the fruit of several years labour employed in the Public Service, chiefly under that great and successful Admiral, Lord Rodney, in a series of Naval Operations, which have been productive of events more glorious than any recorded in the Annals of Britain. As your Royal Highness was present during some part of the service which is the subject of these Observations, and as You have not only honoured the Sea Service by embracing it as a profession, and enrolling your illustrious Name among its officers, but in undergoing the dangers and fatigues of actual service, which is so necessary to attain that practical Skill which Your Royal Highness is well known to possess, I have, upon these grounds, presumed to lay this Work at Your feet. I should do this with greater satisfaction, were it more worthy of Your acceptance; but however inadequate my abilities may have been to the talk, it has been my sincere aim to produce a work of some utility to that only Bulwark of our Country, the British Navy, of which your Royal Highness is the Pride and the Hope.
Your Royal Highness’s Permission to inscribe this work to You, and the personal Notice and Protection with which you have been pleased to honour me, I consider as the first Distinctions of my life, and of which I shall ever entertain a becoming sense, by cherishing those indelible sentiments of Respect, Gratitude, and Attachment, which are due to Your Royal Highness from
Your Royal Highness’s Most faithful, Most obedient, and Most devoted Servant, GILBERT BLANE.
London, May 1, 1785.
Having been appointed by Lord Rodney Physician to the Fleet under his command, in the beginning of the year 1780, I determined to avail myself, to the utmost of my abilities, of the advantages which this field of observation afforded. This I was led to do, in order to satisfy my own mind as a matter of duty, as well as to find out, if possible, the means of bettering the condition of a class of men, who are the bulwark of the state, but whose lot is hardship and disease, above that of all others.