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- 12689
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:36.278Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 12622
- text
- laid out and surveyed.
“Strip!” was the answer, and, rolling up his gold-laced cuff, he
proceeded to manipulate me. He punched me in the ribs, smote me across
the chest, commanded me to stand on one leg and hold out the other
horizontally. He asked me whether any of my family were consumptive;
whether I ever felt a tendency to a rush of blood to the head; whether
I was gouty; how often I had been bled during my life; how long I had
been ashore; how long I had been afloat; with several other questions
which have altogether slipped my memory. He concluded his
interrogatories with this extraordinary and unwarranted one—“Are you
pious?”
It was a leading question which somewhat staggered me, but I said not a
word; when, feeling of my calves, he looked up and incomprehensibly
said, “I am afraid you are not.”
At length he declared me a sound animal, and wrote a certificate to
that effect, with which I returned to the deck.
This Assistant Surgeon turned out to be a very singular character, and
when I became more acquainted with him, I ceased to marvel at the
curious question with which he had concluded his examination of my
person.
He was a thin, knock-kneed man, with a sour, saturnine expression,
rendered the more peculiar from his shaving his beard so remorselessly,
that his chin and cheeks always looked blue, as if pinched with cold.
His long familiarity with nautical invalids seemed to have filled him
full of theological hypoes concerning the state of their souls. He was
at once the physician and priest of the sick, washing down his boluses
with ghostly consolation, and among the sailors went by the name of The
Pelican, a fowl whose hanging pouch imparts to it a most chop-fallen,
lugubrious expression.
The privilege of going off duty and lying by when you are sick, is one
of the few points in which a man-of-war is far better for the sailor
than a merchantman. But, as with every other matter in the Navy, the
whole thing is subject to the general discipline of the vessel, and is
conducted with a severe, unyielding method and regularity, making no
allowances for exceptions to rules.
During the half-hour preceding morning quarters, the Surgeon of a
frigate is to be found in the sick-bay, where, after going his rounds
among the invalids, he holds a levee for the benefit of all new
candidates for the sick-list. If, after looking at your tongue, and
feeling of your pulse, he pronounces you a proper candidate, his
secretary puts you down on his books, and you are thenceforth relieved
from all duty, and have abundant leisure in which to recover your
health. Let the boatswain blow; let the deck officer bellow; let the
captain of your gun hunt you up; yet, if it can be answered by your
mess-mates that you are “_down on the list_,” you ride it all out with
impunity. The Commodore himself has then no authority over you. But you
must not be too much elated, for your immunities are only secure while
you are immured in the dark hospital below. Should you venture to get a
mouthful of fresh air on the spar-deck, and be there discovered by an
officer, you will in vain plead your illness; for it is quite
impossible, it seems, that any true man-of-war invalid can be hearty
enough to crawl up the ladders. Besides, the raw sea air, as they will
tell you, is not good for the sick.
But, notwithstanding all this, notwithstanding the darkness and
closeness of the sick-bay, in which an alleged invalid must be content
to shut himself up till the Surgeon pronounces him cured, many
instances occur, especially in protracted bad weather, where pretended
invalids will submit to this dismal hospital durance, in order to
escape hard work and wet jackets.
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