Observations on the Diseases of Seamen

by Sir Gilbert Blane

More may be done towards the preservation of the health and lives of seamen than is commonly imagined; and it is a matter not only of humanity and duty, but of interest and policy.

Towards the forming of a seaman a sort of education is necessary, consisting in an habitual practice in the exercise of his profession from an early period of life; so that if our stock of mariners should come to be exhausted or diminished, this would be a loss that could not be repaired by the most flourishing state of the public finances; for money would avail nothing to the public defence without a sufficient number of able and healthy men, which are the real resources of a state, and the true sinews of war.

In this view, as well as from the peculiar dependence of Britain on her navy, this order of men is truly inestimable; and even considering men merely as a commodity, it could be made evident, in an œconomical and political view, independent of moral considerations, that the lives and health of men might be preserved at much less expence and trouble than what are necessary to repair the ravages of disease.

It would be endless to enumerate the accounts furnished by history of the losses and disappointments to the public service from the prevalence of disease in fleets. Sir Richard Hawkins, who lived in the beginning of the last century, mentions, that in twenty years he had known of ten thousand men who had perished by the scurvy. Commodore Anson, in the course of his voyage of circumnavigation, lost more than four fifths of his men chiefly by that disease. History supplies us with many instances of naval expeditions that have been entirely frustrated by the force of disease alone: that under Count Mansfeldt in 1624; that under the Duke of Buckingham the year after; that under Sir Francis Wheeler in 1693; that to Carthagena in 1741; that of the French under D’Anville in 1746; and that of the same nation to Louisbourg in 1757[36].

That the health of a ship’s company depends in a great measure upon means within our power, is strongly evinced by this, that different ships in the same situation of service enjoy very different degrees of health. Every one who has served in a great fleet must have remarked, that out of ships with the same complement of men, who have been the same length of time at sea, and have been victualled and watered in the same manner, some are extremely sickly, while others are free from disease. Is it not naturally to be inferred from hence, that the health of men at sea depends in a great measure upon circumstances within the power of officers, and, indeed, upon their exertions, much more than medical care[37]?

It has appeared in the preceding part of this work, that the diseases most prevalent among seamen are fevers, fluxes, and the scurvy. These are indeed some of the most fatal that can attack the human body; but there is a numerous tribe of complaints, which are also some of the most severe scourges of human nature, from which they are in a manner entirely exempt.—These are the diseases to which the indolent and luxurious are subject, and which so far embitter their life as to render their portion of worldly enjoyment nearly on a level with that of the poor and laborious. The diseases alluded to are chiefly the gout, stomach complaints, hypochondriac and other nervous disorders. In all countries it is the better sort of people that are most subject to these; for they are owing to the want of bodily exercise, to the great indulgence of the senses, and a greater keenness and delicacy in the passions and sentiments of the mind. Man being formed by nature for active life, it is necessary to his enjoying health that his muscular powers should be exercised, and that his senses should be habituated to a certain strength of impression. Animal and vegetable nature may be aptly enough compared to each other in this respect; for a tree or plant brought up in a greater degree of shelter and shade than what is suitable to its nature, will be puny and sickly; it will neither attain its natural growth nor strength of fibre, nor will it be able to bear the influence of the weather, nor the natural vicissitudes of heat and cold to which it may be exposed.

It is to be remarked, however, that exercise and temperance may be carried to excess, and that in these there is a certain salutary medium; for when labour and abstinence amount to hardship, they are equally pernicious as indulgence and indolence. This is strongly exemplified in seamen; for, in consequence of what they undergo, they are in general short lived, and have their constitutions worn out ten years before the rest of the laborious part of mankind. A seaman, at the age of forty-five, if shewn to a person not accustomed to be among them, would be taken by his looks to be fifty-five, or even on the borders of sixty[38].

The most common chronic complaints which a long course of fatigue, exposure to the weather, and other hardships, tend to bring on, are pulmonary consumptions, rheumatisms, and dropsies. It is also to be considered, that these complaints, particularly the last, are farther fomented by hard drinking, which is a common vice among this class of men, and they are led to indulge in it by the rigorous and irregular course of duty incident to their mode of life.

With regard to gout, indigestion, hypochondriac complaints, and low spirits, there is something in hard labour of every kind that tends to avert them, and particularly in that rough mode of it peculiar to a sea life. There is also something in the harsh sensations from the objects which seamen are in use to see, hear, and handle, which so modifies their constitutions and hardens their nerves as to make them little liable to what may be called the diseases of excessive refinement, such as those above mentioned. I have, indeed, met with such diseases at naval hospitals; but I always remarked that they were in landsmen who had been pressed, and who had been bred to sedentary and indolent occupations.

The diseases above enumerated, as well as most other chronic complaints, being the offspring of indolence and luxury, while fevers and feverish complaints fall equally on all ranks and descriptions of men, it was a saying of some of the ancients, that acute diseases were sent from heaven[39]; whereas chronic diseases were of man’s own creation. But I shall endeavour in the course of this work to evince, that, with regard to seamen at least, acute diseases are as much artificial as any others, being the offspring of mismanagement and neglect; with this difference, that they are imputable not so much to the misconduct of the sufferers themselves, as of those under whose protection they are placed.