Scurvy and the Ventilation of Ships in the Royal Navy: Samuel Sutton's Contribution

Abstract

THE PROBLEM OF THE DISEASE KNOWN AS SCURVY aboard sailing vessels of the eighteenth century was one of the most common and difficult to solve. This affliction took a high toll of lives each year. Dr. Richard Mead (1673-1754), a London physician of the early part of the eighteenth century, hoped to alleviate this problem through his support of Samuel Sutton. Sutton had invented a device for artificially ventilating ships which, it was believed, would remove a principal cause of this disease-the foul and noxious air below decks. This paper deals with Sutton's efforts to get his invention adopted by the Royal Navy and with Mead's part in it. Scurvy acquired aboard ship resulted from the voyages that were first undertaken in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when men were beginning to traverse the oceans seeking new ways to the East. Problems arose connected with the health of seamen and became more serious the longer men were away from land-problems connected with crowding, air supply, water supply, food, and the care of the sick and injured under shipboard conditions.' So-called sea diseases such as typhus or ship fever became particularly troublesome in these years. Ships that went out into the open seas for long periods of time were virtual floating coffins until means of prevention and cures could be found. Among the sea diseases of the early modem era scurvy was a principal killer. This disease, notes Alfred F. Hess, destroyed more