This week 1,000 Royal Navy Medical Officer Journals were made available to the public at the British National Archives in Kew.   The journals are revealing, if often disturbing by modern standards.   From drunken mutinies to disease outbreaks to a walrus attack, the journals paint a colorful picture of 18th- and 19th-century ship life.

Navy surgeons’ stories

A young girl sick with a seven-foot parasitic worm, a baby so altered by illness nurses thought it “substituted by the fairies” and a detailed description of Admiral Nelson’s arm amputation.

These are just some of the items to be found in the journals of British naval surgeons from the late 18th century onwards. They are crucial for the understanding of medical history: they show how frontline treatment evolved.

For instance, in the case of Ellen McCarthy the 12-year-old girl who vomited up an 87″ (220cm) worm during her passage to Quebec in 1825, the surgeon P Power initially gave her Calomel, a mercury compound popular at the time.

When that didn’t work, he injected her with “ol Tereb” – probably turpentine. That did seem to make her better: the surgeon reporting back to his superiors in London that he would have “no hesitation in adding his testimony to others in favour” of this medicine.

Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing the article along.