The health of the Royal Navy considered, in a letter addressed to the Rt. Hon. Sir John S. Pakington, ... / by Gavin Milroy.

  • Milroy, Gavin, 1805-1886.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The health of the Royal Navy considered, in a letter addressed to the Rt. Hon. Sir John S. Pakington, ... / by Gavin Milroy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    It is quite true that when a ship has got a bad name on the score of health, more may sometimes be made of any future -sickness on board of her than of other vessels to which no black mark may be at- tached ; nor can we wonder at this, as it is scarcely possible for any one sailing in her to divest his mind of her health antecedents, and it is well known that the mere suspicion or dread of a sickness will often go a great way in inducing it, and certainly in aggra- vating its nature—a strong proof, by the way, of the value of a good repute, and of the necessity of pre- venting to the utmost any tendency to mental de- pression or alarm among a ship’s company. Nowhere is panic from a pestilence so dreadful as on board ship at sea. But that there was some hurtful physi- cal cause present in the Dauntless is, at all events, highly probable, when the history of the Rosamond, formerly the Eclair, is considered. Besides the dis- astrous loss of so many of her crew from yellow fever, in 1845, and the reappearance of a similar dis- ease on board a year or so afterwards, when commis- sioned under a new name, she again proved an ex- tremely sickly ship in 1852 on the West India station, and again in 1854 when employed in the Baltic, being there infested more than any other ship of the fleet with low fever and other zymotic maladies, and her daily sick-rate averaging the enormous proportion of 8 per cent, of her crew, throughout the whole period. The ventilation in her between-decks is stated to have been most imperfect, besides other causes of insalubrity to be afterwards noted. c 2