Sicknesses of Voyages, continued: Management of Scurvy.
The expedition to Virginia which returned in 1586 with Drake’s ships homeward bound from the Spanish Main, was the first sent out by Raleigh with the intention of settling, an earlier voyage in 1584 having been made to explore the country. It is in connexion with Raleigh’s second colony (and fourth expedition) in 1587 that we hear of disastrous sickness[1134]. Having left 118 people to inhabit the country, the two larger ships sailed for home on August 27 of the same year. On board the “fly-boat,” the provisions fell short, the water turned stinking, officers and men died, and the vessel was navigated with difficulty to the west coast of Ireland. When they reached Portsmouth, they found the admiral arrived there three weeks before them, but with an equally disastrous experience: “Ferdinando the master, with all his company were not only come home without any purchase, but also in such weakness by sickness of their chiefest men that they were scarce able to bring their ship into harbour, but were forced to let fall anchor without.”
The following year, 1588, was made memorable in the English annals of the sea by the defeat of the Spanish Armada. There was much sickness in both fleets. As regards the English ships, a writer who has had special access to original documents says[1135]:
“We little think, when we peruse the melancholy tale of disease, starvation and shame, so needlessly undergone by the heroic champions of England’s liberty against the invading might of Spain, from what obscure and insignificant causes the difficulties and hardships of the Island seamen may have chiefly arisen”—namely the peculation of officials, the mouldering rations, empty magazines, and the like. In the ships of the Spanish fleet the infection was like that of the plague itself; the main body of the expedition, fifty sail, reached Corunna, Santander and St Sebastian with such infection among the ten thousand men on board, that the inhabitants shut their houses against them.
Two of the heroes of that fight, Drake and Hawkins, met their death by sickness off the Spanish Main in 1595-6. The expedition, consisting of 2500 men in six Queen’s ships and twenty-one others, left Plymouth on August 28, 1595[1136]. Only the deaths of officers are mentioned in the narrative, but of these there seem to have been a good many, when the ships were in the Caribbean Sea. Hawkins died off Porto Rico on November 12. On December 7, Mr Yorke, captain of the ‘Hope,’ died of sickness, on January 15, captain Plat died of sickness, and then Sir Francis Drake began to keep his cabin and to complain of a scouring or flux: he died on January 28, off Porto Bello. On the 27th died captain Jonas of the ‘Delight,’ captain Egerton, and James Wood, chief surgeon of the fleet, out of the ‘Garland.’ On the 28th died Abraham Kendall out of the ‘Saker.’ Several of the ships were sunk so that their men might go to the Queen’s ships, which were short of hands. A muster on February 6 showed in the whole fleet “two thousand sick and whole,” or five hundred fewer than had sailed. There was some loss of life in encounters with the enemy, but much more from disease.
Of the filibustering cruises or expeditions to the East by the South American route, there remain to be mentioned two by Thomas Cavendish, and one at some length by Richard Hawkins, before we come to the establishment of regular English trade to the East Indies by the Portuguese route round the Cape of Good Hope. Cavendish’s first voyage[1137] by the Straits of Magellan was from Plymouth, 25 July, 1586, with three ships (240 tons in all) carrying 125 men.
Touching on the west coast of Africa, they went ashore and took lemons from the trees. Off the coast of Brazil in November and December two men died “of the disease called scorbuto, which is an infection of the blood and the liver.” Arrived at the Straits of Magellan they found twenty-three Spaniards living on shell-fish, “which were all that remained of four hundred which were left there [to found a colony] in these Straits of Magellan, three years before, all the rest being dead with famine.” They were only too glad to hasten from this place, Port Famine, “for the noysome stench and vile savour wherewith it was infected through the contagon of the Spaniards’ pined and dead carkeises.” In one of Cavendish’s own ships, on February 21, 1588, when among the East Indian islands, Captain Havers died of “a most severe and pestilent ague, which held him furiously some seven or eight days. Moreover presently after his death, myself [Pretty, the narrator] with divers others in the ship fell marvellously sick, and so continued in very great pain for the space of three weeks or a month, by reason of the extreme heat and intemperature of the climate.”
One might guess that these were cases of ship-fever (or calenture); but in Cavendish’s last voyage we meet with a strange sickness which will perhaps baffle all nosological conjecture. This voyage, like the first, was intended for the East Indies by way of the Straits of Magellan[1138]. The three tall ships and two barks, having sailed from Plymouth on August 26, 1591, never got through the Straits; they were still within their recesses in April, 1592, many men having “died with cursed famine and miserable cold,” and sick men having been put ashore into the woods in the snow. The narrative (by John Lane), then follows the fortunes of one of the ships, the ‘Desire.’ Landing at Port Desire, in Patagonia, they found scurvy-grass growing, which they ate with oil: “This herb did so purge the blood that it took away all kind of swellings, of which many [had] died, and restored us to perfect health of body, so that we were in as good case as when we came first out of England.” There also they took on board 14,000 penguins, which they had dried on the rocks, mostly without salt; and sailed northwards on December 22. With only 27 men surviving out of 76, they left the coast of Brazil at Cape Frio (near Rio de Janeiro), and then began their more singular experience of disease.
“After we came near unto the sun, our dried penguins began to corrupt, and there bred in them a most loathsome and ugly worm of an inch long. This worm did mightily increase, and devour our victuals;” it devoured everything except iron,—clothes, boots, shirts, even the ship’s timbers! “In this woeful case, after we had passed the equinoctial toward the North, our men began to fall sick of such a monstrous disease as I think the like was never heard of: for in their ankles it began to swell, from thence in two days it would be in their breasts, so that they could not draw their breath, and then fell into their cods, and their cods and yardes did swell most grievously and most dreadfully to behold, so that they could neither stand, lie, nor goe. Whereupon our men grew mad with grief. Our captain [John Davis] with extreme anguish of his soul was in such woeful case that he desired only a speedy end, and though he were scarce able to speak for sorrow, yet he persuaded them to patience.... For all this, divers grew raging mad, and some died in most loathsome and furious pain. It were incredible to write our misery as it was; there was no man in perfect health but the captain, and one boy.... To be short, all our men died except sixteen [i.e., eleven died of the survivors after Cape Frio] of which there were but five able to move.” Those five worked the ship into Berehaven (Bantry Bay) on June 11, 1593, and there ran her ashore.
The remarkable epidemic on board the ‘Desire,’ among men living upon dried penguin infested with worms, was probably not scurvy, or at least not all scurvy: the dropsy and dyspnœa suggest one of the two forms of beri-beri, of a peculiarly severe type. The co-existence of worms in the dried food may lead one to think of a parasitic malady such as that caused by Anchylostoma duodenale, which has also an anasarcous or œdematous character. But the diagnosis of beri-beri appears to be far more likely. That epidemic, however we interpret it, must rank among the curiosities of the history. But, in the next that we come to, the sickness on board the ‘Daintie,’ Richard Hawkins master, on a voyage in 1593 through the Straits of Magellan, the disease is typical scurvy; and the observations on sea-scurvy by Hawkins himself are among the best that we have for the period, and, indeed, until long after the Elizabethan period[1139].
The ‘Daintie,’ a nearly new ship of 300 to 400 tons, weighed anchor from Blackwall on April 8, 1593. She was deeply laden with merchandise for trade and accompanied by a victualler, of 100 tons, the ‘Hawk.’ It was not until June 12, that they got away from Plymouth. They put in at the Cape de Verde islands, about whose climate and health Hawkins makes some observations already quoted. Sailing thence they had come within three or four degrees of the Line, when scurvy broke out:
“My company within a few days began to fall sick of a disease which seamen are wont to call the scurvie; and seemeth to be a kind of dropsie, and raigneth most in this climate of any that I have heard or read of in the world, though [it is found] in all seas. It possesseth all those of which it takes hold with a loathsome sloathfulnesse, that even to eate they would be content to change with sleepe and rest, which is the most pernicious enemie in this sickness that is known. It bringeth with it a great desire to drink, and causeth a general swelling of all parts of the body, especially of the legs, and gums; and many times the teeth fall out of the jaws without pain. The signs to know this disease in the beginning are divers,—by the swelling of the gums, by denting of the flesh of the legs with a man’s finger, the pit remaining without filling up in a good space; others show it with their laziness; others complain of the crick of the back, etc., all which are for the most part certain tokens of the infection. The cause is thought to be the stomack’s feebleness by change of air in intemperate climates, of diet in salt meats, boiled also in salt water, and corrupted sometimes; the want of exercise, also, either in persons or elements, as in calms.”
Hawkins then recalls the experience of the Queen’s fleet in 1590, at the Azores, the ships being in calm weather for six months: “in which voyage, towards the end thereof, many of every ship (saving the ‘Nonpereli’ which was under my charge and had only one man sick in all the voyage) fell sick of this disease and began to die apace.”
Hawkins wrote out the account of his 1593 voyage some time after, and did not print it until 1622; but it may be supposed that the views about scurvy therein expressed were the same that he held and acted upon in his earlier life[1140]. Thus his remarks upon the prevention and cure of scurvy, about to be given, may be taken to stand for the practical wisdom or sagacity of the Elizabethan period. The ship should be kept clean, vinegar should be sprinkled and tar burned. In hot latitudes salt meats should be shunned, and especially salt fish. Salt water should not be used to dress the meat, nor to wash shirts in; nor should the men sleep in their wet clothes. The crews should be set to various exercises, and encouraged to various pastimes. At this point he seems to feel that he is a layman giving medical advice, and interpolates:
“And I wish that some learned men would write of it, for it is the plague of the sea and the spoil of mariners. Doubtless it would be a work worthy of a worthy man, and most beneficial for our country, for in twenty years (since I have used the sea) I dare take upon me to give account of ten thousand men consumed with this disease.”
The learned man was forthcoming in due course, in the person of John Woodall, surgeon-general to the East India Company; and we shall see what he made of it. Meanwhile, in default of professional guidance, we may hear Hawkins himself:
“That which I have seen most fruitful for this sickness is sour oranges and lemons, and a water called Dr Stevens his water, of which I carried but little, and it took end quickly, but gave health to those that used it. The oyle of vitry [vitriol] is beneficial—two drops in a draught of water with a little sugar. But the principal of all is the air of the land; for the sea is natural for fishes, and the land for men. And the oftener a man can have his people to land, not hindering his voyage, the better it is and the profitablest course he can take to refresh them.”
Hawkins, as well as his contemporaries, as we shall see, knew what lime-juice could do for scurvy, and knew also the limit of its powers; it was useful, as he had himself found; but much else was needed to ward off scurvy. After experience showed clearly enough that some commanders with the same stores as others could carry their crews through a long voyage without scurvy; Hawkins himself, in the ‘Nonpareil’ in 1590, had only one man sick of it, while it was general in the fleet. In the voyage of 1593, for all his knowledge and resource, he appears to have found circumstances too hard for him. His crew showed their bad habits while the ship lay at Plymouth; as in Lancaster’s experience two years before, the evil habits of sailors told upon their constitutions, so that they became an easy prey to monotonous living at sea. Scurvy broke out when they were within three or four degrees of the Line: “The sickness was fervent, every day there died more or less.” The ship’s course was accordingly turned westward, although they were too far south to benefit by the north-east trade wind; and in the end of October they came to the coast of Brazil at Santos, four months and a half out from Plymouth. At Santos they obtained 200 or 300 oranges and lemons, and a few hens; there were so many men sick that there were not above three or four oranges or lemons to a share: “Coming aboard of our ships there was great joy amongst my company, and many with the sight of the oranges and lemons seemed to recover heart.” It is the great and unknown virtue of that fruit, he says, to be a certain remedy for this infirmity. The rest of the voyage possesses no special interest for us. The scurvy had “wasted more than half of my people;” so that Hawkins took the crew and provisions out of the ‘Hawk,’ and burned her. He left the Brazilian coast on December 18, passed the Straits of Magellan, and after some filibustering on the Chilian and Peruvian coasts, was captured by a Spanish ship, and sent home to Spain to be ransomed.
Hawkins, it will have been remarked, was no bigoted “lime-juicer;” although he knew the virtues of anti-scorbutic acids, he had a correct apprehension of the need of cleanliness, dry clothing, exercise, amusements and discipline, and if he had understood the need of wind-sails for the ventilation of ’tween-decks, he would have had as scientific a grasp of the whole question as Blane had two centuries after. But in the end of the Tudor period, and in the Stuart period, with abounding enterprise and national expansion, there was little sense of the personal need of breathing space, whether in ships or in houses. The number of souls on board, in proportion to a ship’s tonnage, was twice or thrice as great as the Board of Trade now allows. It was not only in long voyages, or in the monotony of tropical calms, that scurvy was apt to invade a crew. The following experience, on our own shores, is credible enough: In 1611 Purchas was shown a letter from Newfoundland, giving an account of a winter spent there, the writer taking credit to himself for the small amount of scurvy among the men under him: in a company of 39 persons, only four were wanting in the spring; but, by way of contrast, he recalls what happened at home in the year 1600[1141]:
“One Richard Fletcher, that is master pilot here, and a director of the fishing, reported unto me that he was one of the company, consisting of forty persons, that went in a drumbler of Ipswich called the ‘Amitie,’ to the north of Ireland about eleven years ago from London in the late Queen’s service under the charge of one Captain Fleming, and continued there the space of two years. In which time two and thirty died of the scurvie, and that only eight of them returned home, whereof the said Richard Fletcher was one ... notwithstanding that there were to be had fresh victuals and many other helps, which their country [Newfoundland] as yet hath not, but in good time may have.”
We have not yet come to any deliverance of the faculty on the subject of scurvy; Hawkins appears to be giving merely his own experience and reflections. Beside these we may here place the contemporary observations and practice of the French laymen, which are expressly at variance on some points with medical teaching. Some time previous to 1609, Marc Lescarbot wrote an account of ‘the voyage of M. de Monts into New France;’ the expedition sailed from Havre in March, 1604. Their first winter in Canada is thus related[1142]:
In the meanwhile the cold and snows came upon them.... Many idle, sluggish companions drank snow-water, not willing to take the pains to cross the river. “Briefly, the unknown sicknesses like to those described unto us by James Quartier in his relation, assailed us. For remedies there was none to be found. In the meanwhile the poor sick creatures did languish, pining away by little and little for want of sweet meats, as milk or spoon meat for to sustain their stomachs, which could not receive the hard meats, by reason of let, proceeding from a rotten flesh which grew and overabounded within their mouths; and when one thought to root it out, it did grow again in one night’s space more abundantly than before.... There died of this sickness thirty-six; and thirty-six or forty more that were stricken with it recovered themselves by the help of the Spring, as soon as the comfortable season appeared. But the deadly season for that sickness is the end of January, the months of February and March, wherein most commonly the sick do die, every one at his turn, according to the time when they have begun to be sick; in such sort that he which began to be ill in February and March may escape, but he that shall overhaste himself, and betake him to his bed in December and January, he is in danger to die in February and March, or the beginning of April.... M. de Poutrincourt made a negro to be opened that died of that sickness in our voyage, who was found to have the inward parts very sound except the stomacke, that had wrinkles as though they were ulcerated.”
Then follow Lescarbot’s views of the treatment and prevention of scurvy. After advising to avoid “cold” meats without juices, gross and corrupted, salted, “smoaky,” musty, raw and of an evil scent, including dried fishes, he proceeds:
“I would not, for all that, be so scrupulous as the physicians, which do put in the number of gross and melancholy meats, beeve’s flesh, bear’s, wild boar’s and hog’s flesh (they might as well add unto them beaver’s flesh, which notwithstanding we have found very good), as they do amongst fishes the tons [tunnies], dolphins, and all those that carry lard; among the birds the hernes, ducks and all other water-birds; for, in being an over-curious observator of these things, one might fall into the danger of starving. They place yet among the meats that are to be shunned, bisket[1143], beans and pulse, the often using of milk, cheese, the gross and harsh wine and that which is too small, white wine, and the use of vinegar”
—just like our own great masters in prohibitory dietetics.
Lescarbot’s advice agrees on the whole with that of Sir R. Hawkins: the men should be well shod and clothed, merriment should be encouraged, and again:
“Good wine taken according to the necessity of nature, it is a soveraigne preservative for all sickness, and particularly for this. The young buds of herbs in the Spring time be also very soveraigne.... We have had some sick that have been (as it were) raised up from death to life, for having eaten twice or thrice of a coolice made of a cock.”
In the voyage of Sir Thomas Smith to Baffin’s Bay in 1616, the treatment of scurvy by vegetable juices is mentioned: “Next day, going ashore on a little island we found great abundance of scurvie grass, which we boiled in beer, and so drank thereof, using it also in sallet, with sorrel and orpen, which here groweth in abundance; by means whereof, and the blessing of God, all our men within eight or nine days shall gain perfect health, and so continue till our arrival in England[1144].”
On the other hand, those who appear to have had the most correct intuition of the teaching of the schools were the Red Indians. Lescarbot says that, in the treatment of scurvy, “they use sweating often.” Perhaps they had some dim notion of the doctrine of peccant humours: at all events they clung to the alterative practice until long after that date, with a tenacity second only to that of the European faculty itself.