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It is well known, that the Surgeon on board his Majesty’s ships keeps a list of the persons who are sick on board, specifying their diseases, and the times when they came under his care, and when they were discharged. It happened that I was once at the pay-table on board a ship, when several sailors objected to the payment of the Surgeon, alleging, that although he had discharged them from the list, and reported them to be cured, yet their cure was incomplete. From this time, it has been my constant practice when the Surgeon reported a man to be cured, who had been upon the sick list, to call the man before me, and ask him whether the report was true: if he alleged that any symptoms of his complaint remained, I continued him upon the list; if not, I required him, as a confirmation of the Surgeon’s report, to sign the book, which was always done in my presence. A copy of the sick list on board the Dolphin, during this voyage, signed by every man in my presence, when he was discharged well, in confirmation of the Surgeon’s report, written in my own hand, and confirmed by my affidavit, I have deposited in the Admiralty; by which it appears, that the last man on board the ship, in her voyage outward, who was upon the sick list for the venereal disease, except one who was sent to England in the Store ship, was discharged cured, and signed the book on the 27th of December 1766, near six months before our arrival at Otaheite, which was on the 19th of June 1767; and that the first man who was upon the list for that disease, in our return home, was entered on the 26th of February 1768, six months after we left the island, which was on the 26th of July 1767, so that the ship’s company was intirely free fourteen months within one day, the very middle of which time we spent at Otaheite; and the man who was first entered as a venereal patient, on our return home, was known to have contracted the disease at the Cape of Good Hope, where we then lay.
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 490, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/490.html