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.

Scurvy in the East India Company’s Ships: Professional Treatment.

Until the end of the Tudor period, scurvy had been only an occasional incident of English voyages. But as soon as the regular trade to the East begins, we find it a common experience.

The English voyages to the East Indies by the Cape route really began in 1591, when Captain James Lancaster sailed first in command of ships belonging to the Company of Merchant Adventurers; but it was not until 1601 that he sailed again to the East Indies in command of the first ships of the East India Company, which had been formed the year before.

The three ships in 1591, the ‘Penelope,’ ‘Marchant Royal,’ and ‘Edward Bonaventure,’ cleared from Plymouth on April 10[1145]. They crossed the Line on June 6, by which time two men were dead and divers sick. In the tropics so much rain fell that “we could not keep our men dry three hours together, which was an occasion of the infection among them, and their eating of salt victuals, with the lack of clothes to shift them.” On this first voyage, Lancaster began the practice which was generally followed when the East India trade in English ships became established; before attempting to double the Cape of Good Hope, he refreshed his crews, who were weak and sick in all three ships, by a sojourn ashore at the Bay of Saldanha, a few leagues to the north of Table Bay. The voyage had already lasted more than three months from Plymouth, and about six weeks from the Line[1146].

At a muster on August 1, in the Bay of Saldanha, Lancaster found that he had 198 men sound and whole, of whom he assigned 101 to the ‘Penelope,’ and 97 to the ‘Edward Bonaventure,’ sending home 50 more or less unfit men in the ‘Royal Merchant.’ Scurvy, he says, was the disease:

“Our soldiers, which have not been used to the sea, have best held out, but our mariners dropt away, which in my judgment, proceedeth of their evil diet at home.” The voyage was continued to the East Indies, the next that we hear of the state of health being at Penang in the beginning of June 1592, or some fourteen months out. The men were then very sick and many fallen; the sick were landed, and twenty-six died there, but not of scurvy, we may surmise. They had now left but thirty-three men and one boy, “of which not past twenty-two were found for labour and help.”

The two ships sailed for home from Point de Galle on December 8, 1592, and reached St Helena on April 3, 1593; one man was sick of the scurvy, and another had been suffering from the flux for nine months, but on the island both shortly recovered their perfect health. Instead of reaching England, the ships were carried to the West Indies, where, after an attempt to navigate them northwards, they were wrecked, and the small remnants of their crews dispersed.

Lancaster’s first voyage for the East India Company in 1601[1147] was “with foure tall shippes, to wit, the Dragon, the Hector, the Ascension, and Susan, and a victualler called the Guest.” The Company, founded in 1600, began with a capital of £72,000, which was laid out in the purchase and outfit of the ships, and in loading them with merchandise. The crews were as follow:

Dragon,600tons,202men.
Hector,300"108"
Ascension,260"82"
Susan,—"88"
480
Guest,130tons.