Tag Archives: naval surgery

Sea sick: Naval surgery and sanitation in eighteenth-century Britain

March 23, 2023

Melissa Yeo Ontario, Canada   Instruments in a Surgeon’s Chest (click to enlarge). From The surgeons mate or military and domestique surgery, John Woodall, 1639. Wellcome Collection. Public domain. Scurvy, yellow fever, and typhus were considered “the three Great Killers of seamen.”1 Hygiene and diet were very poor aboard eighteenth-century sailing vessels, as ships were often […]