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XXVII. An account of the effect of Mercurial Vapours on the 
Crew of His Majesty’s Ship Triumph , in the year 1810. By 
William Burnett, M. D. one of the Medical Commissioners 
of the Navy , formerly Physician and Inspector of Hospitals to 
the Mediterranean Fleet. Communicated by Matthew Baillie, 
M.D. F.R.S. 
Read June 19, 1823. 
Xt has long been known, that in the vacuum of the baro- 
meter, mercury rises in a vaporous state at the usual tem- 
perature of this climate, and that persons employed in the 
mines from whence this metal is procured, as well as those 
who are employed in gilding and plating, have suffered 
paralytic and other constitutional affections, from inhaling 
the air saturated with mercurial vapours : had any doubt 
remained of mercury existing in the state alluded to, it 
would be effectually removed by the experiments made by 
Mr. Faraday, detailed in the twentieth number of the 
Journal of Science, &c. 
An unprecedented event, which occurred in one of His 
Majesty's ships of the line, at Cadiz, in the year 1810, a short 
time before I took upon me the charge of the Medical De- 
partment of the Mediterranean Fleet, has afforded me an 
opportunity of illustrating this subject on a very extensive 
scale, the details of which may not, perhaps, be uninteresting 
to the Royal Society. 
The Triumph, of seventy-four guns, arrived in the harbour 
