Misson

There are lots of different accounts of where and how big the surgery was. Most of them are from naval accounts and say it was on the orlop deck. Here's one description of the surgeon's mate's quarters: "The surgeon’s mate dwelled within the bowels of the ship, in a six-foot-square canvas enclosure in the cockpit on the orlop deck, directly above the hold in the front of the vessel, where the rocking was greatest, the air foulest, and the natural light faintest. It was barely large enough to contain a sea chest, and a medical chest and the canvas walls pinned to the overhead beams provided scant privacy from the general crew. The surgeon’s mate had no uniform and though he was listed on the ship’s roster alongside warrant officers such as the gunner or the carpenter, he received less pay. Neither surgeons nor surgeon’s mates were highly regarded in the naval hierarchy, since the health of the crews was of little consideration and the benefits not entirely understood or appreciated.” (Bown, Stephen R., Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medieval Mystery of the Age of Sail, Thomas Dunne Books, New York, 2003, p. 88) From the work cited above by J.C. Goddard, a description of where surgery took place: “…the orlop deck would be the surgeon’s cockpit… During an engagement the cockpit provided the surgeon with the worst imaginable conditions in which to carry out his work. In an action of any size, the small area invariably became crowded with dead and wounded men. The cramped conditions, poor ventilation and heat of the battle, with the heavy guns of the lower deck thundering above the surgeon’s head, would cause an unbearably high temperature, particularly on more tropical stations, a high noise level, poor visibility and unsteady conditions.” (Goddard, p. 211) From the same article, a description of the infirmary: “The ships sick berth was not necessarily in the same place as the cockpit. A space would be assigned for the sick by the captain, and this was frequently either under the forecastle or just been a space between two gun ports. Blane described the sick berth as ‘the interval between two guns, or any space between decks, which is sometimes formed into a sort of apartment by means of a partition made of canvas.’ A badly placed sick berth could be very deleterious to the health of the occupants. Some of the sick might be placed in the ‘fore-part of the hold which was damp, unwholesome and filled with stench from the bilges.’ This would be a particularly noisome place low down in the ship, for the ballast in the very bottom was very foul and unhealthy. Jason Farquar, surgeon of HMS Captain, complained that ‘the sick berth was small and uncomfortable and the ship in general very dirty’, while George McGrath, surgeon of the HMS Russel, reported in his Journal that many of the sick on board had to be sent to the hospital at Plymouth rather than remain in the sick berth, giving as his reason that ‘there was but a very poor accommodation for sick men on board of the Russel, which was both cold, damp, and even sometimes wet as the weather during the time we fitted out there was raining without intermission – this circumstance alone produced a vast number of diseases during our stay there.” (Ibid, p. 212) And, finally, some info on the surgeon's concern about the infirmary from Goddard's second part of the article on the Napoleonic War: “Surgeon William Maly of HMS Albion made a note at the end of his Journal as to the ‘Accommodations for the Sick’. On representing to Captain Ferier the necessity of having a comfortable sick berth he immediately afforded to hang conveniently twenty beds taking in two ports, round house and head door, it was filled up with wooden panels, proper persons were appointed to attend on the sick and to the cleanliness of the sick berth, a set of small cots were allowed me, these were kept in readiness so that as men were taken ill of acute disease, he was washed, clean clothes put on and one of the sick beds were allotted him, his hammock carefully aired and put by. (Goddard, Jonathan Charles, “An insight into the life of Royal Naval surgeons during the Napoleonic War, Part II,” Journal of the Royal Naval Medical Service, Spring 1992, page 28) I recently came across a comment that is probably relevant. It basically said that during period there was no "pattern" for ship building. Each ship, even those of the same rates (which, as I understand it, had to do with how many guns a ship carried) was basically hand-built and so no two would have been exactly alike. So I figure this will be part of the reason that the surgery, infirmary and medical quarters were said to be in different places. Another factor would have been that the ship's surgery was usually something of an afterthought and seems to have been provided in part to keep the men from deserting. It wasn't until the late 18th century that members of the Admiralty took any concern about the health of sailors for strategic reasons. Instead, they usually packed the ship with extra men to offset the number they expected to die during a voyage. (Mostly due to illness rather than battle wounds - on long voyages scurvy was particularly worried over which sometimes resulted in three times the men required being packed into a ship. They figured two-thirds would die from dysentery, fevers and particularly scurvy.) This led to overcrowding, which created other health issues. I should also note that from a discussion that Coastie04 and I were having in Plunder in the thread Draughts of the Brig Ship Mercury, the orlop deck is actually a pretty good place to put the surgery because the battle action would be as minimized as possible and this area of the ship generally has the least amount of movement, especially in the center. The stark truth is that there probably is no good place in battle to be doing surgery - in fact, hospital ships were created during period by the BRN, but they never seemed to work out very well. This was due to many factors, among which were that the decision to have them was slow to be made and thus they were often completed too far behind schedule to be useful and were hard to maintain and keep supplied. These are actually the same sorts of problems always experienced by the military, as you will no doubt recall from the documentary series M*A*S*H. I have much more, but I'll save it for my book.

I have come across nothing about people passing out from pain. Almost every book that mentions such talks about concern for the pain the patient might be experiencing. On that note, here is another fine quote (the quote within the quote is from a surgeon in the Napoleonic War): “Of the few accounts of the surgeon’s cockpit during battle, that of Robert Young, surgeon of the HMS Ardent, is probably the most graphic and illustrative… ‘Ninety wounded were brought down during the action, the whole cockpit cabin, wing berths, and part of the cable tier together with my platform and my preparations for dressing were covered with them so that for a time they were laid on each other at the foot of the ladder where they were brought down, and I was obliged to go on deck to the Commanding Officer to state the situation and apply for men to go down the main hatchway and move the foremost of the wounded further forward into the tiers and wings, and thus make room in the Cockpit… Melancholy cries for assistance were addressed to me from every side by wounded and dying and piteous groans and bewailings from pain and despair. In the midst of these agonizing scenes I was enabled to preserve myself firm and collected, and embracing in my mind the whole situation to direct my attentions where the greatest and most essential services could be performed. Some with wounds bad indeed and painful but slight in comparison with the dreadful condition of other were most vociferous for my assistance, these I was obliged to reprimand with severity as their noise disturbed the last moments of the dying. I cheered and commended the patient fortitude of others and sometimes exhorted a smile of satisfaction from the mangled sufferers and succeeded to thrown momentary gleams of cheerfulness amidst so many horrors…’ After the action ceased fifteen or sixteen dead bodies were removed before it was possible to get a platform cleared and come at the materials for operating and dressing, those I had prepared being covered over with blood and the store room door blocked up.” (Goddard, Jonathan Charles, “An insight into the life of Royal Naval surgeons during the Napoleonic War, Part I,” Journal of the Royal Naval Medical Service, Winter 1991, p. 211-2)

While I haven't actually started writing my own book on barber-surgery yet (I have a month and change), I have lately come across a fascinating book at the recommendation of someone on another forum. It's called The Age of Agony by Guy Williams, originally published in Great Britain in 1975 and then republished in the US in 1986. The man has a way with words and I thought I would share this description with all those curious about medicine during the age of no anesthesia. If it takes your fancy, I will publish some other ones I have found in this and other books of various procedures. (We need a little devil emoticon.) “Lithotomy –the operation by which an offending stone is removed from a bladder- was, as the eighteenth century dawned, an exceptionally severe one, and most sufferers from the stone would only agree to be ‘cut’ if the pain that was tormenting them was making life practically unbearable. Their reluctance to submit, in all-too-painful consciousness, to the knife is easily understood since the stone-removing operation that was usually performed lasted, under normal circumstances, for nearly an hour and, if the surgeon concerned did not happen to be a virtuoso, could drag on considerably longer. In this ghastly operation, a huge incision would be made in or near the patient’s groin. Using this raw and bleeding aperture as a means of access to the patient’s interior mechanisms, the surgeon would proceed to dilate, with specially contrived instruments, the neck of the patient’s bladder. Then he, the surgeon, would take a pair of forceps, and with this dangerous implement he would attempt to find, in the somber recesses of the agonized patient, the offending stone or stones. If he, the surgeon, were exceptionally skilful, or exceptionally lucky and if his gropings went unusually well, the unwanted lumps of calcium carbonate would be detected, and would be withdrawn as quickly as possible from their all-too-sensitive resting places – if necessary, by force. The whole process, in the absence of anesthetics, must have been an excruciating experience for the surgeon and his assistants, if they had any human feeling at all: it must have been painful beyond belief for the patient.” (Williams, p. 147)

Yes, I believe that is the book, although my memory is a tad foggy. Thanks, Willie. (For some reason I had $100 in my head, but that may be due to my own foolish spending habits on certain books rather than a recollection of what happened in December of last year.)

What is the name of that book everyone at PiP was talking about with all the period sailing terminology and knots in it? I believe it was Patrick and Jim who were speaking so highly of it...and as I recall it was sort of expensive.

To me he looks just like Vladimir Putin. Yes, I can see it... Craig is at least a very pithy actor. It's certainly a change from the debonair Brosnan style - that they were forever trying to rough up with torture scenes and whatnot. They always seem to want to make some dramatic switch in tone when they bring in a new actor. From earthy Connery to goofy Moore to moody Dalton to suave Brosnan to edgy Craig. (Yes, I left out Lazenby. I don't know how you'd quantify his style. He needed another movie to prove himself. He seemed like he was playing at playing Connery to me. Too bad Connery wouldn't do OHMSS. It would have been the best film in the series.)

It's Daniel Craig again. He was fine in the last one; I just hope the writing is as good on this one. Bond has this tendency to make a really great first movie for a new actor and then give us a weak follow up. Some of the worst Bond films were "second" films (IMO): The Living Daylights and The Man With the Golden Gun come quickly to mind. (I didn't mind Brosnan's second film, Tomorrow Never Dies, although it wasn't as good as Goldeneye. TND did have the best Bond soundtrack ever, but you have to get the foreign release with all the tracks on it to fully appreciate it. (Bike Chase is the single finest Bond soundtrack tune I own.) As an added bonus, it doesn't include the whiny, awful (IMO again) Sheryl Crow song. Unfortunately, it also doesn't include the strong, wonderful k.d lang song either. But I digress...) The new film is called Quantum of Solace. There are a bunch of pre-release "making of" videos you can see about it, although I haven't watched them. (Don't want to spoil it.)

Iron Man? I'll see that one on DVD. There's only one movie I want to pay theatre prices to see this summer...the man with the hat is back. And this time he's bringing Karen Allen. And then there's Bond in November. A good movie year if the writing is up to past standards, I think.

Well, no. I just thought it was funny. It said I was whatever got the highest rating. I think you could game this one pretty easily: Talent - Entrepreneur Success Path Lifer - Tenure Success Path Mandarin - Education Success Path

You are a Dweeb! Your scores: Talent: 59% Lifer: 18% Mandarin: 51%

Watch the end credits. They almost always list the songs there, along with the author of the lyrics. Since it appears to be out of copyright, they could have just stuck their own lyrics into the existing tune. [Edit]It doesn't appear to be on the soundtrack (although I only listened to some of the tracks - many of them seemed unlikely) and no mention is made in the credits (from this website, which appears to be an almost nauseatingly complete fansite for the movie.) If the tune goes like the mp3 on this site (Warning - turn down your speakers) but the words are different, then they just made up their own lyrics. If the lyrics date back to the 1890s, it's probably public domain and they could just write lyrics as they saw fit (and apparently not give credit). If it doesn't sound like that mp3, I'm surprised it's not on the soundtrack. (If you don't have it, you can listen to bits of the tracks on Amazon like I did. It won't give you a complete listen, but you'll get the gist.)

Ah, always ask a music teacher (my mom). It's called "An Irish Lullaby." You can find the lyrics and more info here. My grandmother taught it to my mother and she used to sing it us when we were wee. (Which is why I might associate with Disney. Or not.) Bing Crosby sang it in Going My Way (1944). (I keep wanting to think Connery sang it in Darby O'Gill - a Disney flick, but that doesn't seem right. It would certainly fit though.)

I have heard that song in another movie - an older movie that I can't quite recall...I think it was a Disney kids film from like the 50s or 60s, but that's as far as I'm getting with it.

"You are a Mazda RX-8! - You're sporty, yet practical, and you have a style of your own. You like to have fun, and you like to bring friends along for the ride, but when it comes time for everyday chores, you're willing to do your part." Sounds about right. But then so do bits of the other ones.

And your (science-based) source for this proclamation? A note about the computer models - they are far from complete or accurate. I believe I mentioned the failure to take cloud cover into account somewhere in a previous post (as my user ID Caraccioli). I would argue that we don't even have the ability to create a remotely accurate long range forecast of weather events on earth. (Some others would argue differently. GW is partially predicated on such arguments.) Even the reports issued by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) admit this somewhere in all that dense text they issue. (They are the ones generating most of the computer models you hear about.) The fact that they run and own up to multiple "possible scenarios" is quite telling IMO. Interestingly (to me - another pet research topic), chaos mathematics was created in part from mathematical weather forecasting models. Edward Lorenz was trying to create such models of air movement when he began to notice that his mathematical weather patterns didn't change as predicted. Initial variables in his simple twelve variable computer weather model created grossly divergent weather patterns. This is the 'butterfly effect' you hear so much about. It shows just how complex the science of forecasting is.

Hmm. I'm starting to wonder if I can trust Thrower's research. It's too bad, because this particular book contains an extensive amount of info on the day-to-day life of seamen from the Navy, merchant ships, privateers and pirates. (Although it is not organized quite as nicely as that list, but it still has more info than any similar book I've seen.) I wonder how the museum has the chest labeled?

I have been reading The Age of Sail by W.R. Thrower (1972) and he said something I found interesting regarding seamen's sea chests: "Many men joining a ship had little more than the clothes they stood in and the 'bundle' containing their few possessions. More senior men and petty officers, as well as apprentices and first-timers, had a sea chest. Sea chests were not necessarily plain wooden boxes, they were often very well made and fitted inside at the whim of the owner. A fine example of one believed to have been used by [Admiral Robert] Blake [1599—1657] in the 17th century, is shown in Fig 25." (Thrower, p. 74) Here is the figure, scanned from the book: It actually looks to me a bit like various descriptions I have read of Medicine Chests. Although my impression is that they often had a top compartment with a hinged lid for storing bottles. I would like to note that Thrower has at times (IMHO) a tendency to make sweeping statements that I'm not certain other sources I've read would completely agree with. He also does a less than stellar job of citing some of his sources which I find annoying. (I wonder if the above info also came from a placard or description in the Blake Museum in Bridgewater, Somerset? Alas, he doesn't say.) Still, I find this book quite comprehensive in its way as well as being very interesting. So I wanted to share the comment.

I believe William really kickstarted the the concept. You should talk with him. It seemed pretty loosely organized last year, although William had some beautiful blueprints (or 'draughts' if you want to be proper) of the Mercury. While we never did much with them, I thought they gave a sort of underlying organizational facet to the camp. Even if we couldn't actually have a real ship, we knew what it looked like. This really seems to have started small, though. I know William told me, bu I have forgotten the facts regarding the Mercury Camp. I'm not clear on whether they did it last year or this was the official christening of the concept. I do recall that they were in the fort with the other pirates in the past, which would sort of make the 'separate' Mercury camp idea a challenge. This year we had a separate camp, but the organization was loose, as I mentioned. Being so allowed me to take on the surgeon's role (which I thought would be a sort of overlooked thing due to the expense of purchasing equipment, but there are several people in the various crews who attended PiP who do/will do it - equipment or no.) This year there are several people with really neat ideas building upon last year - Sophia with her spice trader idea, Iron John with his carpenter materials, Jim as captain , Silkie with her most likely less than ordinary ordinary &c. Hopefully all the cool stuff from last year will be back to like Patrick's able seaman, Jim's oar house and Willie Wobble's magnificent cook's set-up and Boo's site. (I hope Boo returns!) But I think you have to start small. Get in touch with event organizers and propose your idea and find a core group to establish some period correct tent sites. That alone brought some people out of their way into our site. Really, check with William. This is his brainchild from what I understand. And if you notice, he's a big promoter of the idea (even though I suspect it's not his nature. )

Ah, my research interests intersect! I thought this passage from W.R. Thrower's book, Life at Sea in the Age of Sail (1972 pre-dating Anthropological GW theories) was rather interesting on the topic of melting ice caps (and the interesting comments one must admit it makes about silly, complicated theories about recent industrial activity being a primary or even a large cause of climatic change). "While the British confined their exploration to a possible north-west passage, the Dutch mainly concerned themselves with attempts to find an north-east passage to the Far East. While actively engaged in whaling, they had continually borne in mind the possibility of an alternative route to the Far East sailing directly over the Pole, and they did actually sail as far as the Pole itself. A trans-Polar sea route was nearly always obstructed by the ice of the Arctic Ocean. But owing to one of those inexplicable vagaries of climate [No, it's pre-industrial anthropological Global Warming! Cutting down all those trees to make ships! ], this ocean was free from ice for several years in the middle of the 17th century, and indeed it was full of waves reported at the time to resemble those in the Bay of Biscay. There is abundant evidence (e.g. Philosophical Transactions, 1675) that many Dutch whaling captains regularly reached very high latitudes; they not only reached the Pole but one ship even went two degrees beyond it. Comparisons made at the time between the logs of various ships confirmed the claims made." (Thrower, p. 9-10) One can but wonder how polar bears survived such melting of the ice 300 years ago, not to mention wonder why all coastal areas were not under water.

If you're really curious about the Defoe/Johnson controversy, I highly recommend the book The Canon-isation of Daniel Defoe by P.N Furbanks and W.R. Owens. I read it and was surprised (and a bit dismayed at first - I wanted so badly to believe Defoe wrote it before I read that book). I wrote about my conclusions on another forum at the time and transferred the matial to my webpage. I have to re-read General History before I start writing on pirate surgeons. It seems there are more references to medicine than I recall based on footnotes and comments in other books I've been reading. It's been at least ten years since I last read it... For now, I am reading Life at Sea in the Age of Sail by W.R. Thrower. It contains a surprising amount of info on pirates (much of which is repeated in his next book, The Pirate Picture) but it also has enough on merchantmen -my original reason for procuring it- to keep me reading.

Hmmmmmmmm...... Isn't Disney a bit strict about licensing and whatnot?

So...what happened? I would think you could arrest someone for that. Or did they just beat the snot out of him?

That's sort of neat. I don't know quite what you'd do with such, but it's sort of neat. I wonder why they would put veins in it? (I know, I'm trying to apply practical considerations to something patently impractical, but still...that would cost extra and serve no purpose.) Now...can you make a monkey cage out of willow branches? I have a practical use for that. Sort of.

You must not have looked very hard... http://pyracy.com/forums/index.php?showtop...lying+spaghetti The topic was just running under false colors - it's a pirate tactic. Ah, the Flying Spaghetti Monster...the religion for internet users with too much time on their hands.

Naturalist? I was curious about this as I thought it meant what, in fact, it does mean. From Wiki - Naturalism is the view that the scientific method (hypothesize, predict, test, repeat) is the only effective way to investigate reality. Naturalism does not necessarily claim that phenomena or hypotheses commonly labeled as supernatural do not exist or are wrong, but insists that all phenomena and hypotheses can be studied by the same methods and therefore anything considered supernatural is either nonexistent or not inherently different from natural phenomena or hypotheses. So if it is naturalism, then We're naturalists together.