As well as their medical and supervisory duties, especially in relation to children and nursing mothers, we see doctors presiding over courts of law on board as they tried wayward emigrants whose punishment was meted out of a jury made up of their peers. We also see the kinds of penalties, including jail, dealt out by colonial authorities to incompetent surgeons for misdemeanours on board.
Most of all, we discover how doctors saved lives by overseeing the daily sanitary and hygiene routines on board, and we see the astonishing ways in which emigrants submitted to their discipline in the knowledge that obedience was crucial for a healthy passage.
So successful were these measures that less than two per cent of emigrants were buried at sea in an age when health officials on land could only dream about the authority vested in doctors on emigrant ships to control and regulate the lives of their civilian populations at sea.
Contents:
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
1. 'It would be very satisfactory to land them all in good health': Emigrants and their Superintendents at Sea
2. 'May it be the last of our sorrows': Disease and Death at Sea
3. 'The obstinately dirty character of the people': Origins, Children, and Epidemics at Sea
4. 'A most efficient body of officers': Surgeon Superintendents and their Responsibilities
5. 'His many duties and anxieties': Supervision and Discipline at Sea
6. 'The mother's milk generally fails them in about six weeks': Infant and Child Health
7. 'The people suffered greatly in consequence': Discomfort, Weather, and Great Circle Sailing
8. 'The Dr is supreame over all on board bar the Capton and Officers': Matrons, Constables, and Emigrants
9. 'Firmness and indulgence, consideration and strictness': Dr Strutt's Management of Families and Irish Girls
10. 'The passengers are falling sick ever day': Epidemics and Quarantine
Appendix 1: The Uses of South Australian Data on Causes on Death
Appendix 2: Individual Causes of Death as Reported by Surgeons on Voyages to South Australia 1848-1885
Notes
Bibliography
Index
