Medicine Archive

The Wretched Prison Ships

This article addresses a subject a bit before our time, but one that applies to our beloved series nonetheless. Many Napoleonic-Era prisoners of war were held in prison ships, and I cannot imagine that in the 30 years between the American War of Independence and the Napoleonic Wars conditions changed much! I suppose Jack and [...]
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British Naval Supremacy: Some Factors Newly Considered

“As for a man-of-war, it is either an autocracy or it is nothing, nothing at all – mere nonsense. You saw what happened to the poor French navy at the beginning of the Revolutionary War…” – Jack Aubrey to Stephen Maturin, The Yellow Admiral British Naval Supremacy: Some Factors Newly Considered By Mitch Williamson Strategic [...]
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Survival At Sea 1/2: Weather, Food, Water, Medical

Throughout the course of our beloved series, our stalwart heroes find themselves in many perilous situations that aren’t always directly related to combat (stranded on a tiny island during a storm, adrift on the open ocean without a raft, shipwrecked at least twice, etc.). Luckily, they have the survival skills to carry them through these [...]
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The 1778 Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen and its Present-Day Implications

This article is somewhat different from what is usually posted here. It’s a political piece discussing current events, but it definitely relates back to our era and our areas of focus. Full disclosure: I’m of a liberal bent, and I think the following article makes a lot of sense. But I’m not posting it to [...]
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Surgeons At Sea: Logs from the Age of Sail

The National Archives has opened up and made accessible over 1,000 Royal Navy Medical Officer Journals, just like the ones Stephen keeps on his travels with Jack. Some of them have been digitized and can be downloaded free of charge. Unfortunately, none of them contain any sketches (others in the collection apparently do, but most of [...]
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Any Friend of Stephen’s is a Friend of Mine: Guillaume Dupuytren

Throughout the course of our beloved series, a few allusions are made to Stephen’s past studying medicine in Paris. He “dissected with Dupuytren”, apparently, but what on earth does that mean? Was he a mentor of Stephen’s? As it turns out, our dear Maturin and Dupuytren would more accurately be described as contemporaries. Dupuytren had [...]
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An Overview of Scientific Advancements in Maturin’s Day

Science flowed freely in spite of the war: indeed, earlier in the year Stephen had been invited to address the learned of Paris at the Institut, a journey that he might have made, with the consent of both governments… - Desolation Island Early 19th-century Europe is in the midst of a scientific revolution that will [...]
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Royal Navy Medical Reform Before Dr. Maturin

While Stephen Maturin, physician extraordinaire, is depicted as something of a medical genius throughout our beloved series, medical procedures and cures during his time were not always effective. It’s simple fact that more men in the Royal Navy during the 18th and early 19th centuries died of disease than anything else. In the late 18th [...]
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Of the Prevention of the Scurvy by Dr. James Lind

This is an excerpt from Dr. James Lind’s paradigm-shifting A Treatise of the Scurvy. Dr. Lind was the first to discover that citrus fruits could both cure and prevent a disease that had troubled sailors since voyages of long duration had become possible. The causes of the disease were still unknown, and Lind had no [...]
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An Introduction to Life at Sea in Aubrey’s Royal Navy

The full experience of life aboard a man o’ war in Aubrey’s Royal Navy is not something that can be easily summed up in a short article. It’s not something that can be easily summed up in 20 novels, though Patrick O’Brian gives us an incredible window into that world long past. However, this introductory [...]
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