James Lind and scurvy / [Ralph Stockman].

  • Stockman, Ralph, 1861-1946.
Date:
[1926]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: James Lind and scurvy / [Ralph Stockman]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    In cases of fevers the Patients cloths are directly fumigated with Brimstone in the smoak house & baked in an oven sprinkled with vinegar. The fever Wards are cut off from all communication with the rest & nothing but hospital dresses are used in them. We have some¬ times 90 women nurses at a time their pay is £ 12 pr an. In our wash house we have seldom less than 24 women constantly employed. All these are under sober & discreet Matrons. We have about 20 Labourers at is 6d everyday employed in the different branches of Duty in the House. And indeed no expence is spared for the regular management of the house. I shall be glad at all times to have the pleasure of hearing that you are well. I beg that my best respects may wait upon Lady Dick & Miss & that my compliments may be made acceptable to all the Members of the Colledge, believing that I am with more particular regards Dr Sir Your most obedient & obliged hble Servant James Lind. Royal Hospital at Haslar, 3d Sept. 1758. P.S.—I beg youll excuse this Letter having no cover as the paquet in which it is enclosed is already very large. Lind’s personality and abilities seem to have attracted little attention during his lifetime except from a small group of his naval professional colleagues who admired him and looked up to him as an authority on all matters connected with the diseases of seamen—a “marine Hippocrates,” as one of them calls him— and he received no honours or public recognition of any kind from the Admiralty or any of the learned bodies of his own country. He was an original Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, but this came to him automatically as a member oF the Philosophical and Medical Society when it was trans¬ formed by Charter, in 1783, into the Royal Society. His writings show him to have been a man of very considerable general culture and education. This is evidenced by the easy way in which he handles not only medical literature but historical or other outside matters which incidentally emerge, and by his valuable and complete synopsis of all the writings on scurvy previous to his own, which is a model of accuracy and fair statement. So far as I know nothing of the kind had ever been done before in medical literature. In his day the lectures in the University classes, with the exception of those