With regard to gout, indigestion, hypochondriac complaints, and low spirits, there is something in hard labour of every kind that tends to avert them, and particularly in that rough mode of it peculiar to a sea life. There is also something in the harsh sensations from the objects which seamen are in use to see, hear, and handle, which so modifies their constitutions and hardens their nerves as to make them little liable to what may be called the diseases of excessive refinement, such as those above mentioned. I have, indeed, met with such diseases at naval hospitals; but I always remarked that they were in landsmen who had been pressed, and who had been bred to sedentary and indolent occupations. The diseases above enumerated, as well as most other chronic complaints, being the offspring of indolence and luxury, while fevers and feverish complaints fall equally on all ranks and descriptions of men, it was a saying of some of the ancients, that acute diseases were sent from heaven[39]; whereas chronic diseases were of man’s own creation. But I shall endeavour in the course of this work to evince, that, with regard to seamen at least, acute diseases are as much artificial as any others, being the offspring of mismanagement and neglect; with this difference, that they are imputable not so much to the misconduct of the sufferers themselves, as of those under whose protection they are placed. If I were to add any other complaint to the three already mentioned, as most prevalent, and peculiar to a sea life, it would be those foul and incurable ulcers which are so apt to arise at sea, particularly in a hot climate. The slightest scratch, or the smallest pimple, more especially on the lower extremities, is apt to spread, and to become an incurable ulcer, so as to end in the loss of a limb. The nature of the diet, and the malignant influence of the climate, both conspire in producing them. The diseases most frequent and prevalent at sea have this advantage, that they are more the subjects of prevention than most others, because they depend upon remote causes that are assignable, and which increase and diminish according to certain circumstances, which are in a great measure within our power.