OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, 53 



completely eradicated in the navy, partly, no doubt, 

 from increased and increasing attention to general 

 cleanliness, comfort, and diet ; but mainly from the 

 constant use of a simple and palatable preventive, 

 the acid of the lemon, served out in daily rations. 

 If the gratitude of mankind be allowed on all hands 

 to be the just meed of the philosophic physician, to 

 whose discernment in seizing, and perseverance in 

 forcing it on public notice we owe the great safe- 

 guard of infant life, it ought not to be denied tc. 

 those * whose skill and discrimination have thus 



Pascoe Thomas, Lond. 1 745, So tremendous were the ravages 

 of scurvy, that, in the year 1726, admiral Hosier sailed with 

 seven ships of the line to the West Indies, and buried his ships' 

 companies twice, and died himself in consequence of a broken 

 heart. Dr. Johnson, in the year 1778, could describe a sea-life 

 in such terms as these : " As to the sailor, when you look 

 down from the quarter deck to the space below, you see the 

 utmost extremity of human misery, such crowding, such filth, 

 such stench ! " " A ship is a prison with the chance of being 

 drowned it is worse worse in every respect , worse room, 

 worse air, worse food worse company ! " Smollet, who had 

 personal experience of the horrors of a seafaring life in those 

 days, gives a lively picture of them in his Roderick Random. 



* Lemon juice was known to be a remedy for scurvy far 

 superior to all others 200 years ago, as appears by the 

 writings of Woodall. His work is entitled " The Surgeon's 

 Mate, or Military and : Domestic Medicine. By John Woodall, 

 Master in Surgery London, 1636," p. 165. In 1600, Com- 

 modore Lancaster sailed from England with three other ships 

 for the Cape of Good Hope, on the 2d of April, and arrived 

 in Saldanha Bay on the 1st of August, the commodore's own 

 ship oeing in perfect health, from the administration of three 

 table-spoonsfull of lemon juice every morning to each of his 

 men, whereas the other ships were so sickly as to be un- 

 E 3 



