A Discourse upon some late Improvements Of the Means for Preserving the Health of Mariners.

£22,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A vital contribution to the understanding of scurvy which caused havoc aboard ships until the late eighteenth century. Finding a cure for scurvy, along with the calculation of longitude, ushered in the era of grands voyages . The voyages of Cook, Vancouver, Flinders, La Perouse, Baudin, Freycinet and Dumont d’Urville were all made possible but to these discoveries. “The bibliographical importance of this pamphlet, which contains the discourse given to the Royal Society by its President prior to the presentation to Mrs. Cook (in Cook’s absence on his third voyage) of the Copley medal is two-fold. In the first place it contains the first appearance in print of Cook’s paper on the the method taken for preserving the health of the crew of the Resolution during his second voyage - the paper which earned him the medal. Secondly, Pringle’s discourse was considered sufficiently important for the Commissioners of Longitude to ask his permission to include it in the official account of the second voyage, this was forthcoming and the discourse was printed in extenso. Cook’s paper was subsequently reproduced in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society” (Holmes). Pringle, in addition to being President of the Royal Society, was Surgeon-in-Chief of the Army, and as such was an ardent supporter of the naval surgeon, David MacBride (1726-78), who “recommended to the Admiralty in 1767 the use of fresh wort, or infusion of malt, in the treatment of scurvy” (ODNB). Indeed, Pringle ch

• Binding: Hardcover

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