Observations on the Diseases of Seamen

by Sir Gilbert Blane

The increase of fevers in the old squadron was owing to two causes. One was the importation of new-raised recruits brought from England by some ships that arrived in the beginning of January. These were distributed to such ships as stood most in need of men; and being very dirty and ill cloathed, were likely to harbour infection. They were evidently the cause of sickness in the Warrior and Royal Oak; for these ships were before that time healthy, and the fever began with these strangers, and spread amongst the former crew. It is remarkable that the ships that brought them from England were not affected by them.

It was caught in the Royal Oak from six men that came from England in the Anson, which men, though first put on board the Namur, communicated no fever there, having been kept separate from the rest of the men; but being sent to the Royal Oak, they were themselves first taken ill with a fever, which afterwards spread to about thirty of the other men. What was singular in this fever was, that the eyes and skin of all that were affected by it became yellow, though without any particular malignancy; for only two died on board, and one in the hospital. There was one whose skin was very yellow, yet his complaint was so slight as never to confine him to his bed.

The other cause of the increased proportion of fevers in the old squadron was, the great number of these complaints that arose in the Magnificent. This ship having been sent on a cruise about the middle of February, and the weather being rainy, squally, and uncommonly cold, for the climate, many fevers of the inflammatory kind appeared. During this cruise she made prize of a large French frigate, called the Concord, and the greater part of the prisoners being taken on board, the fever from that time assumed a different type, with new and uncommon symptoms; for, instead of being inflammatory and requiring bleeding, as before, it became more of a low, putrid kind, and was attended in most cases, if not in all, with a continual sweating; so that, instead of evacuations, the remedies that were found most effectual were the Peruvian bark, blisters, and opium. Thus we see fevers variously modified according to men’s constitutions, the state of the air, and the noxious effluvia of the strangers that intermix with them.

We find the proportion of fluxes increasing in the new squadron in January and February, as they had formerly done in most of the ships soon after their arrival from England. They were observed also to prevail principally in those ships that had formerly been most subject to fevers, and not to arise till the fever had subsided. They were found, for instance, to arise later in the Suffolk, where the fever was obstinate and malignant, than in the Princess Amelia, where the fever had been at one time general and fatal, but not so violent and lasting as in the other.

The four ships that were sent to cruise near Guadaloupe continued at sea for seven weeks; and it was owing to the prevalence of scurvy in these and in the Magnificent that the proportion of that disease was greater at this time in the old than in the new squadron.

The fleet remained at St. Lucia till the accounts of the peace arrived in the beginning of April. The service was then at an end, and I returned to England with the first division of the fleet, which sailed from St. Lucia on the 12th of April, under the command of Rear-admiral Sir Francis Drake, who was at this time in extremely bad health, and requested me to accompany him.

PART I.
BOOK III.
Of the Numbers and Mortality of different Diseases sent to Hospitals.

CHAP. I.

Hospital at Gibraltar, 1780—at Barbadoes, 1780—Causes of Mortality from various Diseases—Accidents—the Hurricane—Wounds—Amputations—Scorches—Fluxes very apt to arise at the Hospital—Proportion that were received and died at Antigua—St. Christopher’s—St. Lucia, and at Barbadoes, 1782—at Jamaica, 1782—at New York, Autumn, 1780—1782—General View of the Admissions and Mortality at all the Hospitals during the War.

In order to judge of the loss sustained by disease, in the course of that service of which a relation has been attempted, the sick sent to the hospitals must be taken into account. I shall, therefore, give a short view of the different diseases admitted, and their mortality, at the several hospitals connected with the fleets in which I served. This will serve also to illustrate the different effects that different situations have upon the health and recovery of men[22].