WILLIAM ANDERSON, 1748-1778 MASTER SURGEON, ROYAL NAVY by J
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[From Schenckius: Observationum Medicarum, Francofurti, 1609.] ANNALS OF MEDICAL HISTORY New Seri es , Volu me V Nov embe r , 1933 Numb er 6 WILLIAM ANDERSON, 1748-1778 MASTER SURGEON, ROYAL NAVY By J. J. KEEVIL, M.B., SURG. LIEUT., R.N. LONDON, ENGLAND years previously had stepped into HE true measure of Richmond Blamire’s shop at the cor- William Anderson is ner of Craven Street, Strand, and realized when it is re- bought three note books, had left membered that he lived nine hundred pages of manuscript,7 only about thirty years which, apart from his other writings, and that all his contri- were to make his name remembered. butions to knowledge were made in the In these vellum-backed volumes he last eight years of his life. His achieve- recorded with great care the daily ments have not been adequately progress of Cook’s last voyage as it recognized. appeared to a man of wide learning The Gun-room port closed, H.M. Sloop Resolution continued her slow and interests who was impelled by a passage to the North after her first consuming thirst for knowledge. funeral at sea, the purser made his William Anderson was born in laconic entry in the pay book “Dis- Scotland about 1748,20 the year James charged Dead,” and, in the evening, Lind retired from service afloat. Of Captain Cook in the solitude of the his early life nothing is known. His Great Cabin wrote up his journal. youth covers a period of wars and “Tuesday, the 4th. of August, 1778 upheavals; by the time he was eight . soon after he had breathed his years old the Seven Years War had last, land was seen to the Westward; broken out, India was in a ferment, and to perpetuate the memory of the and the news of the Black Hole atroc- deceased, for whom I had a very great ities had reached England. The loss of regard, I named it Anderson’s Island. Minorca, the shooting of Admiral ...” (Appendix 1) Byng, and the successes of Boscawen William Anderson’s brief career had followed. Before the Peace of Paris ended. But the young man, who two the activities of the Navy were re- peatedly before the public. When William Anderson’s name first ap- Anderson was twenty-three interest pears in the public records in the in travel and discovery had been Muster and Pay Books of H. M. Sloop stimulated by the return of Lieutenant Resolution as Surgeon’s first Mate on James Cook from the first of his three the 3rd of December, 1771. He entered great voyages. Meanwhile there had by Warrant from the Navy Board. been an awakening interest in naval The ship in which Anderson began his medicine. The disastrous inroads of naval career was a surveying sloop of scurvy during Lord Anson’s voyage of 462 tons under the command of 1740 had prompted Lind to write his Lieutenant James Cook; James Patten famous Treatise in 1754, while his was the surgeon. Of the remaining book on tropical medicine appeared seven years of his life six were spent in 1768. Stephen Hales had published almost continuously afloat under con- his pioneer work on naval hygiene in ditions of great hardship and priva- 1743, “Description of Ventilation,” tion. This was the ship of which which was followed in 1745 by Samuel Lieutenant Charles Clerke wrote to Sutton’s book on the same subject. Sir Joseph Banks21 as “ ... by far Like other young Scottish doctors at the most unsafe ship I ever saw or that time Anderson may have become heard of ... a ship which a pilot interested in travel by starting life will not undertake to carry down the as surgeon to the Greenland Fisheries river,” while Banks stated that she Company or in some ship engaged in had a “ . low and small cabin and the slave trade. A knowledge he was remarkably low between decks. ”21 showed of the ancient Mexican lan- The Resolution had as her consort on guage and of diseases in the West this voyage the Adventure, a sloop of Indies supports the latter suggestion. 336 tons, Captain Tobias Furneaux, His marked botanical inclinations sug- Surgeon Thomas Andrews. The Resolu- gest that he may at some time have tion sailed from Deptford on April 9, been a student at the Botanic Gardens 1772, but contrary winds prevented in Edinburgh. This is made the more her from leaving English shores until probable by a note he made later when the thirteenth of July. The voyage was he named a new genus, “I called it undertaken for purposes of surveying Ramsaia in honour of Dr. Ramsay, and for collecting material of general Professor of Natural History in the scientific interest. Calling first at University of Edinburgh.”9 Unfor- Ascension they sailed thence to the tunately the records of the Royal Cape of Good Hope. They next College of Physicians and the Incor- followed a route along the edge of poration of Surgeons of Edinburgh, of the Antarctic ice, creeping through ice the University and of the Faculty of fields hidden by sleet, or moving slowly Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, with half frozen crews through fog show no evidence of his medical banks, till they reached latitude 710 studentship or apprenticeship. Simi- South. Water was scarce and the ships’ larly no information about him can provisions were beginning to deterio- be found in the defective nineteenth rate. After 117 days out of sight of century transcript, “The Surgeon’s land they reached New Zealand and Servitude Record,” at the Public in the following summer visited the Record Office.23 Society and Friendly Islands. A con- siderable outbreak of scurvy threat- England they were both sick men, and ened, but was averted. There had Clerke died a year after Anderson at already been 20 cases in the Adventure the age of thirty-eight.13 with one death, though there were Another of Anderson’s companions none in the Resolution. Cook had in the Resolution in 1772 was George prevented any serious menace to his Vancouver (1757-1798), rated an a .b . ship’s company of 118 men by sup- and aged fifteen. He was a midship- plementing their food with cabbage, man under Captain Clerke in the sweetwort, sauerkraut, marmalade of Discovery. Vancouver too was destined carrot, “which the surgeon found use- to develop phthisis after his great ful in several cases,”11 malt, mustard, voyage of 1791-1795 and died of it at and portable broth, as well as rob of the age of forty-one.15 Perhaps the lemons and oranges ... a measure most important association which An- which was to bring him the Copley derson formed during the voyage of Medal of the Royal Society. On his 1772-1775 was that with the two voyage of 1768-1771 in the Endeavour enthusiastic naturalists, Johann Rein- Cook had lost thirty men, including hold Forster and his son Johann the surgeon, Monkhouse, out of a George Adam Forster, the latter at ship’s company of eighty-five; these that time little more than a boy. deaths are said, however, to have been They probably taught Anderson much due chiefly to malaria contracted at during the three years and when he Batavia.21 After his second voyage he next went to sea he armed himself was able to write,11 “Tbe Resolution with their recently published “Char- performed a voyage of three years and acteres Generum Plantarum” (fol. eighteen days, through all climates 1775) describing the Australian flora. from 520 North to 710 South, with the There is, however, no reference to the loss of one man only by disease, and Surgeon’s first Mate in their “Observa- who died of a complicated and linger- tions made during the Voyage . ” ing illness, without any mixture of (1778). When Anderson landed once scurvy” (Appendix 5). In the course more at Woolwich he was twenty- of the next two years of surveying seven years old. He had been round the and collecting in Polynesia a second world on a voyage which in length voyage to the Antarctic was made. covered three times the earth’s cir- Then, having visited the Marquesas, cumference. James Cook had noticed New Hebrides, New Caledonia, and his ability and begun a friendship, Pitcairn Island, the Resolution rounded which caused him to take Anderson the Horn and reached England on with him as Surgeon of the Resolution July 29, 1775.12 One of Anderson’s on his next voyage, and to refuse the shipmates on this voyage, Lieutenant services of a professional botanist.14 Charles Clerke, was again associated Cook wrote,13 “Mr. Anderson, my with him; on Cook’s next voyage he Surgeon, who, to skill in his immediate became Commanding Officer of H.M.S. profession, added great proficiency Discovery, which sailed as consort to in natural history, was as willing as he the Resolution in 1776. Like Anderson was well qualified, to describe every- he must have developed the seeds of thing in that branch of science which tuberculosis during the voyage of should occur worthy of notice.” An- 1772-1775, for when they next left derson had already begun his studies in ethnography and geology, meteor- 10, 1776. The Resolution and the Dis- ology and anthropology. Daniel So- covery commissioned at Deptford, the Iander, the naturalist of Cook’s first former with a complement of one voyage, wrote to Sir Joseph Banks hundred and twelve men. They were after visiting the ships at Woolwich on unusually happy ships. Of the Discov- August 13, 1775, that “Mr.