cxxii SURGEON'S REPORT. 



The second fatal case under my care was one of dropsy (ascites). James Dickson 

 had been on a fishing party two months before the manifestation of dropsical symptoms. 

 He had fallen into the water, and had slept through the night in his wet clothes. His 

 general health from this period was gTadually disturbed, and I attribute his malady to 

 the suppressed perspiration consequent upon exposure to damp and cold. On the 

 20th of October, 1831, he complained of pain and tightness of the abdomen, which, on 

 examination, was found to be swollen and tense. Aperients and diuretics were ordered, 

 as also mercurials to promote the action of the absorbent system, due attention being 

 paid to the function of the skin. I combated the accumulation of fluid with varying 

 success, until the latter end of December, when the tension became extreme, and he was 

 tapped. The operation, as usual, gave him only temporary relief; and, gradually sink- 

 ing, he died on the 10th of January, 1832. 



It is worth while to notice, that at various times during the course of this complaint, 

 symptoms of scurvy made their appearance. So again in Buck's case (epilepsy) the 

 same disease occasionally manifested itself; again in Henry Eyre''s case (the cook), who 

 was affected with rheumatism ; and in short, in nearly all the cases, the same scorbutic 

 symptoms were mixed up with the proper characteristics of each disease. Even con- 

 sumption, absolute as it is in our climate, was modified by the same controlling 

 diathesis. The experienced statistical investigator will, in the history of all atmospheric 

 constitutions, observe the same phenomenon in all parts of the world. The cholera 

 epidemic, which stalked like a malignant giant over a great part of the globe, spreading 

 death and desolation in its course, asserted the same controlling influence over disease 

 in general, as has been remarked by most writers on that disease. So again in districts 

 where ague prevails, most diseases receive some additional intermittent character 

 which in other regions do not properly belong to them. 



From the experience of former voyagers, and from a consideration of the common 

 causes of scurvy in a northern region, we had sufficiently been taught, that no precau- 

 tion, however strict, no policy, however comprehensive, could ensure a crew from the 

 occasional ravages of this debilitating malady. The absurdity of attributing it to the 

 single cause of salt piovisions, would have been inferior to the pathological views even 

 of the earliest investigators of disease ; for the ancients tell us, that not any one cause 

 produces disease, but that is assumed in common parlance as the cause which seems 

 chiefly to have contributed to the effect. Every depressing agent contributes to establish 



