A DISCOURSE UPON SOME LATE IMPROVEMENTS OF THE MEANS FOR PRESERVING THE HEALTH OF MARINERS.
DELIVERED AT THE Anniversary Meeting of the ROYAL SOCIETY, November 30, 1776. By Sir JOHN PRINGLE, Baronet, PRESIDENT,
CORRECTED BY THE AUTHOR.
GENTLEMEN,
Before we proceed further in the business of this day, permit me to
acquaint you with the judgment of your Council, in the disposal of Sir
Godfrey Copley's medal; an office I have undertaken at their request, and
with the greater satisfaction, as I am confident you will be no less
unanimous in giving your approbation, than they have been in addressing
you for it upon this occasion. For though they were not insensible of the
just title that several of the Papers, composing the present volume of
your Transactions, had to your particular notice, yet they did not
hesitate in preferring that which I presented to you from Captain Cook, giving An account of the method he had taken to preserve the health of the crew of his Majesty's ship the Resolution during her late voyage round the world*. Indeed I imagine that the name alone of so worthy a member of this society would have inclined you to depart from the strictness of your rules, by conferring upon him that honour, though you had received no direct communication from him; considering how meritorious in your eyes that person must appear, who hath not only made the most extensive, but the most instructive voyages; who hath not only discovered, but surveyed, vast tracts of new coasts; who hath dispelled the illusion of a terra australis incognita, and fixed the bounds of the habitable earth, as well as those of the navigable ocean, in the southern hemisphere.
[* The paper itself, read at the Society in March last, with an extract
of a letter from Captain Cook to the President, dated Plymouth, the 7th
of July following, are both subjoined to this discourse.]
I shall not, however, expatiate on that ample field of praise, but
confine my discourse to what was the intention of this honorary premium, namely, to crown that Paper of the year which should contain the most useful and most successful experimental inquiry. Now what inquiry can be so useful as that which hath for its object the saving the lives of men? And when shall we find one more successful than that before us? Here are no vain boastings of the empiric, nor ingenious and delusive theories of the dogmatist; but a concise, an artless, and an incontested relation of the means, by which, under the Divine favour, Captain Cook, with a company of an hundred and eighteen men*, performed a voyage of three years and eighteen days, throughout all the climates, from fifty-two degrees north, to seventy-one degrees south, with the loss of only one man by a distemper**. What must enhance to us the value of these salutary observations, is to see the practice hath been no less simple than efficacious.
[* There were on board, in all, one hundred and eighteen men, including
M. Sparrman, whom they took in at the Cape of Good Hope.]
[** This was a phthisis pulmonalis terminating in a dropsy. Mr. Patten, surgeon to the Resolution, who mentioned to me this case, observed that this man began so early to complain of a cough and other consumptive symptoms, which had never left him, that his lungs must have been affected before he came on board.]
I would now inquire of the most conversant in the study of bills of
mortality, whether in the most healthful climate, and in the best
condition of life, they have ever found so small a number of deaths in
such a number of men, within that space of time? How great and agreeable
then must our surprise be, after perusing the histories of long
navigations in former days, when so many perished by marine diseases, to
find the air of the sea acquitted of all malignity, and in fine that a
voyage round the world may be undertaken with less danger to health than
a common tour in Europe!