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SUMMARY:The lungs of a ship: labour\, medicine and the maritime environmen
 t\, 1740–1800 - Paul Sampson (Rutgers University)
DTSTART:20191021T120000Z
DTEND:20191021T130000Z
UID:TALK131743@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Jules Skotnes-Brown
DESCRIPTION:My overall project\, 'Ventilating the Empire: Environmental Ma
 chines in the British Atlantic World\, 1700–1850'\, investigates the pre
 -industrial origins of efforts to improve air quality as a measure for pre
 venting the spread of contagious disease. The portion I will present exami
 nes the attempt to ventilate and reform the 'close\, confined\, putrid air
 ' on Royal Navy ships during the mid-18th century. Alarmed at the high mor
 tality rates of sailors\, British experimenter and clergyman Stephen Hales
  (1677–1761) invented new 'ventilators': hand- or wind-powered bellows c
 onstructed to mimic the action of human lungs. Required on all Navy ships 
 after 1756\, these machines were unpopular with captains and many sailors\
 , but Hales' theories deeply influenced the work of maritime medical exper
 ts James Lind\, John Pringle and Gilbert Blane\, who viewed ventilation as
  a vital necessity to be cultivated through hygienic discipline. Managemen
 t of the shipboard environment was fiercely debated in moral terms that ca
 st the clean\, well-ventilated ship as the 'nursery' of sailors and the di
 rty ship as a 'pestilential maw' – an appellation most frequently applie
 d to slave ships. My work will examine how shipboard ventilation played in
 to debates over the use and abuse of labour both in the Royal Navy and the
  West Indies slave trade.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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