20 INTRODUCTION. 



deed, there are now but few on board ships, smee 

 it has been found that it is not the living on salt 

 meat, or the sea air, which produces the scurvy, 

 but the want of wholesome provisions, of linen 

 and of clothing, which make it impossible for the 

 people to change their clothes though often wet 

 through ; the want of cleanliness, and fresh air in 

 their births ; and, above all, the want of due care 

 and attention, which always causes a desponding 

 spirit among the men ; whence it results that an 

 opposite mode of treatment is the best preventative 

 of the scurvy. But the measures above enumerated 

 are not yet every _ where applied to a sufficient 

 extent ; and thus we have, even now, dreadful 

 instances of the ravages which this disorder causes 

 on board of ships. In such, the use of Donkin's 

 prepared meat cannot be sufficiently recommended, 

 and is indeed of the highest importance. Could 

 Lord Anson, in his voyage round Cape Horn, in 

 174<0 ; could our ships in their passage from Arcli- 

 angel to the Baltic, in the years 1812 and 1813, 

 have had a stock of this meat on board, so many 

 men would not have fallen in the prime of life 

 victims to this cruel disease. * Important improv6- 



* Fresh provisions being extremely dear in the West Indies, 

 the EngHsh Admiralty has found it less expensive to supply the 

 hospitals vi^th Donkin's meat from England, than to purchase 

 it fresh on the spot; and when I was in England, in the years 

 1814 and 1815, a great supply of Donkin's meat was sent to 

 the fleet of Admiral Cochrane, on the coast of America. 



