Observations on the Diseases of Seamen

by Sir Gilbert Blane

There should be in every ship an apparatus for distilling water in case of distress. This consists merely of a head and worm adapted to the common boiler, and distillation may go on while the victuals are boiling. More than eight gallons of excellent fresh water may be drawn off in an hour from the copper of the smallest ship of war[82]. I refer for a more particular account of all this to the works of Dr. Lind, who was the original inventor and recommender of this method.

This invention seems to have escaped others so long, from the idea that the desideratum in freshening sea water was some substance to be added to it while under distillation. No such substance is necessary, and, the more simple the mode of distillation, the fresher the water will prove.

Rain water at sea is always pure and wholesome, and may be saved occasionally by means of a sail or awning.

CHAP. III.

Of Clothing.

Nature has made man so defenceless, that even the rudest nations, in the hottest climates, in general, adopt some sort of covering to guard themselves from the weather. We may affirm, that clothing is the most artificial circumstance in the life of man; and there is none, of which the errors subject him to more inconvenience and hardship. Insensible perspiration is performed by the pores of the skin, and being one of the most important functions of the body, the suppression of it seems to be one of the principal causes, or at least one of the most frequent attendants on feverish and inflammatory complaints; and one of the most common causes of this suppression is the application of cold to the skin.

In order to keep up perspiration, it is necessary that the orifices of the pores of the skin should be bathed, as it were, in the vapour already secreted from them; and clothing seems to act in confining this, as well as in preventing the escape of the natural heat and the access of the external air. Though the air should not be cold, it will check perspiration by carrying off this vapour and drying the skin. In the warmest climates exposure of the skin to the external air is unsafe; for it not only produces a feverish and uneasy sensation at the time, but occasions the most dangerous internal disorders. In consequence of the great sensibility and sympathy of the body, and from the pores of the skin being open in a warm climate, exposure is in some respects even more dangerous than in a cold one. Nothing is more apt to bring on the locked jaw and tetanus than sleeping in the open air; and it was observed in Jamaica, that when it was the custom to wear cotton and linen clothes, the dry belly-ache was much more common than now that it is the custom to wear woollen cloth.

We know besides, that the pores of the skin can absorb not only the moisture that floats in the atmosphere, but a variety of foreign bodies, whether noxious or medicinal, which may be applied to their orifices; and as the air is in certain places loaded with noxious matter, may not clothing be considered as a filter, as it were, to separate the impurities of the air before it comes in contact with the surface of the body?

It is therefore every where of the utmost consequence that sufficient and suitable clothing should be provided.

It would certainly be for the benefit of the service that an uniform should be established for the common men as well as for the officers. This would oblige them at all times to have in their possession a quantity of decent apparel, subject to the inspection of their superiors. It would also be less easy to dispose of their clothes for money without detection, and desertion would also thereby be rendered more difficult.