MILNE, John.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Some Account of the Diseases that Prevailed in Two Voyages to the East Indies, in the Carnatic East-Indiaman, First edition. A medical reformer who "mothered his crew as children" (Friedenberg, p. 103), Milne strongly criticizes the East India Company's system of granting cargo tonnage allocations to surgeons, which, in his view, causes doctors to neglect their patients in the pursuit of profit. We can trace no other copies in commerce since the two that sold at Sotheby's in November 1967.Launched in 1787, the 1,169-ton Carnatic was built specially for the China trade and made six journeys out between 1786 and 1802. Milne (1775-1841) served as surgeon's mate and then surgeon during two voyages captained by James Jackson. During the first, his medical superior died, "and the whole duty of the ship was now to be entrusted to me" (p. 24). His letters remark on the adverse health effects of changes to regular diets while at sea, in particular after the Carnatic arrived in China, where the switch from bread to rice, combined with workload and weather, caused a spike in disease. After his adventures at sea, he became a company surgeon in the Bombay Establishment and ended his successful career as president of the medical board in Bombay. Despite his views on the tonnage system, he profited from it, using his earnings to endow a scholarship in medicine at the University of Aberdeen.This copy is inscribed on the title page, "Presented by Lewis Heermann, Gen. Surg. U.S.N." Heermann (1

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.