Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On scurvy in the mercantile marine / by Walter Dickson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![By WALTER DICKSON, M.D., R.N., Medical Inspector of Customs. [Read June 4th, 1866.] The subject of scurvy in the merchant navy has of late excited a considerable amount of attention. It is surprising that, in the present state of our knowledge, a disease so easy of prevention and cure should exist at all. But that it should especially infest the ships of a country like England, placed in the foremost rank of maritime nations, is a lament- able fact unworthy of an age which boasts, and not without reason, of its enlightenment, philanthropy, and material progress. I purpose in these observations to give some account of a series of investigations which I have been called on to make during the last two years by direction of the Board of Trade, with the view of ascertaining the origin of the disease in various ships which have arrived in the port of London, and in which cases of scurvy were either so flagrant or so numer- ous as to demand the notice of the Government. The medical officer of the Privy Council had, in his Annual Report for 1863, given sea-scurvy a conspicuous place among preventable diseases requiring further State in- terference. At his request, Dr. Barnes, one of the physicians of the Dreadnought hospital ship, produced a valuable re- port, so complete and exhaustive, as to leave little to be desired. The records of that noble and truly catholic charity abounded with illustrations of the disorder in every degree of intensity, and there is probably no existing insti- tution where it can be studied to such advantage. Dr. Budd, during his tenure of office as physician, had con- tributed the fruits of his experience in an elaborate and still standard treatise which was published about thirty years ago in the Library of Medicine. Indeed, it is to the medical officers and managers of the Dreadnought that the authori- * Much of this paper has siuce appeared, under another form, in the “ Lancet of January, February, and March, 1867.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21952413_0006.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
