Taken with ships that, with others, have arrived in the port of London during the past two years with cases of scurvy.
“Of direct causes this is undoubtedly first and foremost; but of indirect causes we have a few words to say. Dirt, bad provisions, and any form of disease to which sailors, in common with other men, are subject, will predispose to scurvy. This cannot and should not be denied, but it affords to parsimonious captains a very large peg whereon to hang sundry invectives as to the cry lately made about the continued prevalence of this disease in the mercantile marine. Such captains, with pardonable ignorance, consider scurvy a form of venereal disease, give the wretched subject thereof mercury, and bring him into port salivated as well as scorbutic.”
Mr Leach further adds:—
“In summing up statistics of scurvy for the past year (1867), we find that a total of 235 accredited cases were admitted into British hospitals, giving no account of those who convalesced in sailors’ homes or elsewhere.
“To this we may add, that seven sailors were left at St Helena, from a ship recently arrived in the Thames; that a vessel put into Falmouth on the 29th ult., with no less than sixteen severe cases of scurvy on board, and that between twenty and thirty cases have arrived in this port during the present month. It would be well (as a supplementary aid to the prevention of scurvy by inspection of lime juice) that the dues levied for the St Helena Hospital should be abolished. It was stated to us some weeks ago by a very old inhabitant of that Island, that this fact alone caused many ships to pass without calling for needful supplies of antiscorbutic material.
“I would however remark, that if the system proposed by the Seamen’s Hospital Society were put in force, no such aid to the prevention of this disease would be required, inasmuch as every ship would then be supplied with good lime juice.”
The following figures, giving the number of patients suffering from scurvy admitted into the Seamen’s Hospital, shows a decrease
in the disease, since the publication of the above:—
| In | 1865, | from British | vessels, | 101; | foreign do. | 1 |
| ” | 1866 | ” | ” | 96 | ” | 5 |
| ” | 1867 | ” | ” | 90 | ” | 4 |
| ” | 1868 | ” | ” | 64 | ” | 10 |
| ” | 1869 | ” | ” | 31 | ” | 9 |
| ” | 1870 | ” | ” | 30 | ” | 21 |
| ” | 1871 | ” | ” | 24 | ” | 16 |
SEAL′ING WAX. See Wax.