Such being the pathology of the disease, he comes next to the indications of cure; and these he takes from “a famous writer, Johannes Echthius.” They are:
1. The opening of obstructions.
2. The evacuating of offending humours.
3. The altering the property of the humours.
4. The comforting and corroborating the parts late diseased.
The order of treatment, lege artis, is accordingly as follows: the administration of a clyster or clysters; the opening of a vein, if strong (“but beware of taking too much blood away at once”); next day after the bleeding, “if he can bear it,” give him pills of euphorbium or gamboge; and lastly, “if you see cause,” certain days after you have given of any of your former laxatives, you may give a sweat to the patient in his bed. Thus the indications from the pathology would be fulfilled—opening of obstructions, evacuating of ill humours, and altering the property of the humours. It should be said for Woodall that his practice was better than his theory. Thus, he cautions the young dogmatists who sailed as surgeons in East Indiamen, not to carry their principles too far; he has heard that they are somewhat fond of the lancet, and he cautions them not to take too much blood at sea, as excessive depletion “makes the disease worse;” he cautions them also as to the use of gamboge.
We may now proceed with a few more illustrations of what the Company’s ships were actually experiencing during the period that those questions were before the Court of Directors[1150].
In the sixth voyage for the Company, under the command of Sir H. Middleton, the captain of the ‘Darling’ and three of his merchants died at Tecoa, and most of the men were ill. In the eighth voyage, when homeward bound between the Cape and St Helena in the month of June, many of the men fell ill with scurvy, and the ship had to come in to Waterford instead of the Thames. A similar experience befell Captain Thomas Best in the ‘Dragon’ and ‘Hosiander,’ carrying together 380 persons. Having left Gravesend on February 1, 1612, he completed his trading in the Indies, and arrived in the Thames on June 15, 1614, six months from Bantam. The scurvy in this voyage comes in towards the end. On March 4, 1614, “I did set sail in the roade of Saldanha; yet notwithstanding our short passage, having been from Santa Helena but two monethes and nine days, the one half or more of our company are laid up [on June 4] of the scurvie and two dead of it. Yet we had plentie of victuals, as beef, bread, wine, rice, oil, vinegar, sugar; and all these without allowance. Note that all our men that are sick have taken their sickness since we fell with Flores and Corvo. For since that time we have had it very cold, especially in two great storms.... From the Cape of Good Hope to the islands of Flores and Corvo I had not one man sick.” While in the Malay Archipelago they had buried twenty-five men at one place.
On November 3, 1618, the Directors have letters from two of their captains at the Cape, of July 6 and 7, with news of their arrival there on June 26, and the loss or sickness of many men, partly through the stinking beer, the tainted beef, the lack of fresh provisions at the Cape, and the want of warm clothes. A letter of February 25, 1619, announces the arrival of the ‘Peppercorn’ in Bantam roads: A great many men had died in the ten-months’ voyage between England and Bantam; putrefied beef and pork, “not man’s meat,” the chief cause of sickness. When they arrived at Bantam, not six men able to work; the whole fleet in the like distress. Twenty-five men in all dead or drowned. A letter from Batavia, January 11, 1622, says the master of the ‘Anne’ and 14 men of the fleet were dead: “so many men are deceased that they have not enough to man all the ships now in the roads.” The ‘Diamond’ sailed from England on October 8, 1621, and after a “long and tedious voyage” arrived at Jacatra previous to November 24, 1622: enclosed are the accounts of those men who have died, and nine wills. Another letter from Batavia, sometime in 1623, covers an “abstract of the men deceased in the ships.”
On March 28, 1624, the ‘Royal James,’ with five others, sailed from the Downs; she called at Saldanha Bay, and arrived on or before November 15, at Swally bar, Batavia; the bread had been very bad, the water too little, the beef not fit for men; have enclosed the names of those deceased. The ‘Jonas,’ also arrived out at Batavia on November 15, appears to have been one of the five others; she called at Saldanha Bay on July 19; “the wholesomeness of the air and the herb baths caused the most part of their sick men to recover in ten days from the scurbeck.” In June, 1625, the ‘Anne’ had been at Mocha for eight months in great distress, with most part of her men dead and the ship ready to founder.