Observations on the Diseases of SeamenBlane, Gilbert, Sir
History
Observations on the Diseases of Seamen
Blane, Gilbert, Sir
Medicine, Naval -- Early Works To 1800; Sailors -- Diseases
recovering state, and many lives are lost from this circumstance, after
the force of the disease has been subdued[99].
With regard to the peculiar form, before described[100], which this
fever assumes a few months after ships have been in a hot climate, we
found camphor, volatile salts, and serpentary, the best remedies. As
there was a remarkable coldness of the skin, I was induced in one case
to try the hot bath, and with good effect, from which it seems probable
that a short stay in a bath, of a heat from 96° to 100°, so as to have
its warming and stimulating, without its relaxing effects, would answer
well in fevers of this kind.
2. Of the BILIOUS REMITTING FEVER.
This is peculiar to tropical climates, and arises in the same
situations in which intermitting fevers arise in temperate and cold
climates. It seldom arises at sea, unless where there has been previous
exposure on shore, of which some examples have been mentioned in the
first part of the work. It may generally be traced to the air of woods
or marshes; and in our fleet hardly any men were attacked with it but
those who were employed in the duties of wooding and watering.
The most distinguishing symptom is a copious secretion of bile which
attends it. Its course, in general, is shorter than that of the fever
before described; and though the symptoms are more violent, they are
not so equal and steady, owing to the tendency there is to remission.
The symptoms are particularly violent at the beginning, in so much
that some of the men, after being exposed upon duty to the heat of
the sun and the air of marshes and woods, would become frantic, being
seized almost instantaneously with _delirium_ resembling madness. This
fever, when it arises merely from the effluvia of woods and marshes,
has a natural tendency to remit; nay, some fevers at St. Lucia,
proceeding from this cause, were of the pure intermitting form from
the beginning. But in many of those that arose at Jamaica little or
no remission was to be perceived; and it was distinguished from the
ship fever by the bilious vomits and stools, more violent delirium,
and head-ach, and by being attended with less debility. The greater
tendency to the continued form at this time was probably owing to this
circumstance, that the men who were exposed to the land air in wooding
and watering, were then exposed also to such causes as naturally
produce continued fevers, such as infection, the foul air of the
French prizes, intemperance, and hard labour. There was in some cases
a yellowness of the eye, and even of the whole skin, but without the
other symptoms that characterise the yellow fever, properly so called.
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