The Surgeon's Mate

Medicine at Sea in the 17th Century

Author: Debra Mattingly

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Surgeon John Woodall (1570-1643) revolutionized 17th-century maritime medicine as the East India Company's first Surgeon General. From battling scurvy and infection to performing amputations under fire, his manual The Surgeon's Mate became essential shipboard reading. This gripping history reveals the brutal realities of naval healthcare in the age of exploration-where disease killed more sailors than Naval battles. Dr. Woodall, barber-surgeon, adventurer, and the first Surgeon General of the East India Company-stood on the front lines of maritime medicine in an age when a sailor's greatest enemy was not cannon fire, but infection. Armed with lancets, dubious elixirs, and a stubborn belief in lemon juice, Woodall battled disease, superstition, and bureaucratic neglect to keep men alive on perilous voyages to the Indies and beyond. This book unearths Woodall's forgotten legacy, from his groundbreaking manual The Surgeon's Mate (1617) to his bitter struggles with the East India Company. Through vivid accounts of shipboard epidemics, improvised surgeries, and the birth of naval medical standards, it reveals a world where a single wound could fester into gangrene beneath the decks and scurvy's cure was known-and ignored-for centuries. Surgeons doubled as chemists, butchers, and sometimes executioners. Meticulously researched and rich with original sources, The Sea Surgeon's Chest plunges readers into the stinking holds and storm-tossed sickbays of the early maritime world. It is a story of ingenuity and brutality, where one man's work laid the foundations for modern naval medicine-even as the sea refused to surrender its dead without a fight.