Saving ‘the Lives and Limbs of many’: at sea with early modern ship’s surgeons

John Woodall. Line engraving by G. Glover, 1639. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection

In her new research, Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin explores early modern ship’s surgeons. She explains how in the early seventeenth century, John Woodall (1570-1643), first surgeon-general of the East India Company (EIC), published a practical text for surgeons at sea. The Surgions Mate, or A Treatise… of the Surgions Chest (1617) was positioned as a helpful guide for sea surgeons ‘who by reason of their youth and lack of practice’ required guidance, particularly for the extreme conditions of a ship at sea (sig. ¶3r). Diseases, including scurvy, typhus and dysentery, along with accidents, foul living conditions, limited supplies, and violent warfare were only some of the challenges faced by a seventeenth-century crew and ship’s surgeon. A sea surgeon played the role of surgeon who would treat bodies by manual operation, but also physician (treating internal ailments), and the apothecary preparing and dispensing medicines, all rolled into one. Professional roles and practices on land could also be complex, though the sea surgeon was in a rather unique position – being the only trained medical practitioner in the confined space of a ship. Woodall innovatively suggested an official inventory of medicines and tools for the EIC surgeon’s chest. Across the seventeenth century, other experienced practitioners also published guides for fledgling sea surgeons, often featuring rather traumatic case histories. The hope, in the words of the surgeon John Moyle in Chirurgus Marinus: or, the Sea-Chirurgion (1693) was to ‘to save the Lives and Limbs of many’.

Curiously, there has been little focused research to date on early modern British sea surgeons, either on merchant or naval ships. This is a significant oversight, considering the value of their expertise – we are talking of crews in their hundreds, on hazardous voyages lasting months, even years – and the rapid expansion of maritime infrastructure and networks in the seventeenth century.

What do these printed guides by experienced surgeons tell us? Unsurprisingly they allow us to glimpse contemporary medical practices and customs aboard, such as how to treat wounds, ulcers, fractures, and dislocations. Woodall’s text recommends the use of citrus fruits to combat ‘the lamentable disease’ of scurvy which had ‘so long and so fiercely assailed saylers and sea-men of all sorts’ (and this was one of the earliest printed accounts to endorse the same). However, a close reading of these texts can also reveal something of the lived experiences of the crew and surgeon on ships, and even give insights into their social and emotional lives.

In his Chirurgus Marinus (1693) and his Chyrurgic Memoirs (1708), John Moyle catalogues, through patient case studies, the general hazards of the physical environment of the ship to the health of the seamen: a man unfurling a sail falls into the sea; a young sailor runs at speed and slips on the deck, hitting his head violently against a beam; lifting nautical equipment ‘men get Cricks in their Backs that disable them, so that they cannot stand upright’; heaving ballast one man ‘gave the other a violent blow with his Shovel on the side of the Head and Face’; a seaman knotting the rigging slips and falls down onto the deck from a great height; after drinking heavily and ‘sleeping in the cold on the Ships-deck’ seamen’s’ limbs become immobile. In Chirurgus Marinus Moyle also explores the emotional responses of seamen – this is especially interesting, for ship-borne patients have rarely been considered within the history of emotions. Moyle vividly describes states of emotional and psychological distress in which seamen afflicted with intense fever believe the sea ‘to be a Meadow, and will endeavour to go into it. I have known some at Sea, who when their Mess-mates (who looked after them) have but turn’d their back, have got out of the Gun-ports into the Sea’ (pp. 155-6). In his directions to young surgeons on ‘how to Prepare for a Sea-Fight’, Moyle gives practical advice – such as having two tubs of water ready, one for dipping tools in between surgeries, the other for disposing of dismembered limbs – but he also captures the emotional tension of conflict on the near horizon. Moyle asks his readers to put themselves in the place of the surgeon and crew and imagine ‘that you are now at Sea in a Man of War, and in sight of the Enemy, and all Men are clearing their respective quarters, and fitting-themselves for Fight…’ (p. 48).

There is another interesting dimension to these surgical texts. This relates to professional self-fashioning, which was particularly important given the perceived low status of surgeons in medicine. In their publications, seventeenth-century ship’s surgeons were keen to stress how their authority stemmed from years of practising on naval and mercantile vessels. As Moyle puts it, his work ‘is not founded upon frothy Notions, but it is the Product of real Experiences.’ Yet, sea surgeons were also quick to demonstrate that they had read widely – both ancient and contemporary medical authorities – perhaps to counter claims that they were ignorant or little more than humble barber-surgeons. Woodall suggested that the surgeon’s mate (effectively a trainee sea surgeon) must observe disease and treatment on board very carefully, as well as ‘to read much, I meane in Chirurgery and Physicke, and well to consider & beare in minde what he reades’ (sig. ¶¶3v-4r). In other words, sea surgeons were positioning themselves as men of theoretical (book-based) and experiential (first-hand) knowledge. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, surgeons in print more generally stressed the scholarly and the practical elements of their expertise. We can, though, conceive how this would be an especially important identity for sea surgeons since they had such varied roles and responsibilities on merchant and navy vessels.

Sea surgeons have often had a poor reputation in the popular imagination – both early modern and contemporary – as unskilled charlatans, quick to act and slow to think. My further research into this fascinating group of practitioners aims to nuance these perspectives on ship’s surgeons, both in terms of their own self-fashioning and in relation to broader issues of social, medical, and emotional lives on early modern sea-faring vessels.

Works cited:

John Moyle, Chirurgus Marinus: or, The Sea-Chirurgion. Being Instructions to Junior Chirurgic Practitioners, who design to serve at Sea in this Imploy (London, 1693)

John Moyle, Chyrurgic Memoirs: being an account of many extraordinary cures which occurred in the series of the author’s practice, especially at Sea, when imploy’d in the Governments Service (London, 1708)

John Woodall, The Surgions Mate, or A treatise discovering faithfully and plainly the due contents of the Surgions Chest (London, 1617)