A treatise on the venereal disease / by John Hunter.

  • John Hunter
Date:
1810
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the venereal disease / by John Hunter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    men had the disease when he sailed, there was hardly a possibility of their contracting it any where afterwards in the voyage; this appears to be too long for a gonorrhoea to last. But let us suppose even that Wallis carried it thither in his ship,and that one or two of his crew had it; as he staid there five weeks, it was very possible, even very probable, that such person or persons might have communicated it so quickly as to have become the cause of contamination of the whole crew of his ship; but as this did not happen, it is a presumptive proof that Wallis did not carry it thither. Bougainville left France in December 1 706, but lie touched at several places where some of his people might have got the disease; the last of which was Rio de la Plata, which he left in November 1 767, and arrived at Otaheite in April 17 68, five months after. This inter- val of time agrees better with the usual continuance of the disease than the length of Wallis’s voyage, and therefore, f rom this circumstance, it becomes more probable that Bougainville carried it thither. Besides, it is likely that he could guard his people less against the disease than Wallis, for Wallis could have his choice of men at his first setting out, which was all that was necessary to prevent his carrying the disease with him, for he ran no risk of contracting it afterwards : but although Bougainville had the same advantage at first, yet he had it not after- wards, for his men were in the way of infection in several places, and he had no opportunity of changing them, and probably no great chance of having them cured. The circumstance of the disease being found by Bougainville at Otaheite soon after his arrival, is a kind of proof that he carried it thither himself; for, l observed before, that, if Wallis had carried it by one man only, this man could in a very few days have so lar propagated it, as to have spread it through the whole ship’s crew ; and as Bougainville arrived at the island ten months after Wallis, there was a sufficient time for the inhabitants of the whole island to have been infected, and the ravages of the disease must have been evident to them immediately upon their arrival. Bougainville re- mained only nine days at the island of Otaheite, and observed nothing 9 O the disease till some weeks after his dcpaiture, when it was found
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