The name ‘Trotter’ is widespread in the border counties of Scotland and in Northumberland and Durham. The family’s origins are lost in the mists of mediaeval Scots history, and its emergence was not helped by being on the losing side in many local conflicts. One branch was wiped out at the Battle of Flodden; another suffered the fate of the Covenanters and the marquis of Montrose; a third threw in its lot with Bonny Prince Charlie. Fortunately, however, most Trotters accepted the Hanoverian succession and shared in the prosperity of Georgian Britain. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the...

Following in the footsteps of other aspirants to the navy’s medical service, in the winter of 1778 Thomas Trotter visited London to pass the necessary examination and secure an appointment. The first reaction of visitors to the metropolis was often one of amazement. Even to people like Trotter who were used to Edinburgh, the size and scale of London must have been bewildering. Peter Cullen, a compatriot who was visiting for the first time and for the same purpose, described himself as being ‘struck with astonishment . . . quite giddy with the noise, confusion, strange sights of wonderful and...

On 9 January 1779, Thomas Trotter reported on board HMS Berwick at Portsmouth to take up his post as third surgeon’s mate. It was a blustery day with a fresh north-easterly wind and a touch of frost in the air. Trotter’s first sight of his new ship floating in the choppy waters of the navy’s principal naval base can hardly have been inspiring. Berwick had just emerged from dry dock, where she had been one of the first vessels to have had her bottom sheathed in Charles Middleton’s new copper plating, and was now a grubby mast-less hulk tied up...

For a naval surgeon to find himself demobilized on the banks of the Mersey was no bad thing. Liverpool was at this time one of Britain’s major trading ports. At the beginning of the century, the wealth of London and Bristol had given the merchants of those cities a virtual monopoly over foreign commerce, but within fifty years the pushy upstarts of Liverpool, who cut their costs and paid their captains and agents a fraction of the going rates, had overtaken them. When Trotter began to look for a berth in 1783, three hundred ships were being cleared for foreign...

In 1784, Thomas Trotter was twenty-four years old with four years sea-going experience as a naval surgeon, spent in a variety of climates and conditions. He had learnt much about the practical elements of his profession, and had begun to develop clear and novel views on the genesis and treatment of that greatest of all eighteenth-century maritime scourges, scurvy. Applying observation in true Enlightenment fashion, he doubted the prevailing explanation that the cause of the disease lay in putrefaction. He had witnessed the effects of fresh vegetables and citrus fruits in the Channel, the West Indies and the North Sea...

The American War had been an unparalleled disaster. With Britain outnumbered on land and sea by French, Spanish and Dutch forces, the American colonies had secured their independence, and attacks on British possessions in Gibraltar and India had only just been beaten off. A new government led by William Pitt took office in 1784, and applied itself to restoring Britain’s power and prestige. Thin, sickly and austere, with no passions except for port wine, Pitt had nevertheless inherited his father’s oratorical skills and ability to manage Parliament. Under his leadership the country’s recovery was rapid. Government expenditure was slashed and...

Vengeance arrived in Portsmouth after a wet and stormy trip from Chatham packed with men. In addition to her normal complement of six hundred, she carried another four hundred who were to be distributed to other ships in the squadron, and when Trotter joined her in February 1793, large numbers had been laid low with typhus. Sixty of the most serious cases were transferred to Haslar, while dozens remained sick on board. Trotter took stringent action to isolate the infected, fumigate the atmosphere, dry the decks with stoves and fires, pump out the hold, cleanse the ballast and ensure that...

When war was declared, Britain had taken immediate advantage of the disarray in revolutionary France. A sea-borne expedition seized her major West Indian islands; anti-republican risings in Brittany and the Vendée were supported; and Lord Hood’s fleet occupied the great Mediterranean base of Toulon, destroying ships, stores and timber before it was ejected by an artillery major called Bonaparte. But there were opportunities for the French as well. Festering political discontent in Ireland and the existence of huge convoys in the western approaches carrying the wealth of the world to the city of London offered irresistible targets. Sadly for French...

While Howe and Bridport played cat and mouse with the French in the Channel, the greatest potential threat to health at sea continued to be scurvy. For decades the navy’s operations had been undermined by the disease, which would appear after only six weeks and steadily turn the crew into enfeebled invalids. Even on the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, memories of its devastating impact during the Siege of Gibraltar and Rodney’s campaigns in the West Indies were fresh. Yet within a decade, scurvy had been all but overcome and consequent improvement in the navy’s health was an important factor...

Coming after the set-backs of 1796, the victory off Cape St Vincent revived the national spirit and restored confidence in the navy. But the mood did not last. Two months later came news of the worst possible kind – the Channel Fleet had mutinied. On Easter Sunday, 16 April 1797, the seamen refused to sail and announced that the fleet would remain at its anchorage at Spithead until their grievances had been satisfied. The principal demand was for higher pay, but there were calls for improvements in victuals, and in the treatment of the sick and wounded. Rates of pay...

Trotter’s estrangement from Bridport and St Vincent removed him from any involvement in the day-to-day health problems of the Channel Fleet, but it gave him the time he needed to make a longer-term impact through his writings. In 1796, he had produced Medical and Chemical Essays. It was a short work containing discussions of scurvy among convicts in New South Wales, a case of heart disease at Haslar, and methods of keeping water ‘sweet’ at sea. Following its publication, Trotter began work on what was to become his major contribution to naval medicine. It was entitled Medicina Nautica: an Essay...

Newcastle was an ancient town built on the steep sides of the north bank of the River Tyne, 10 miles from its mouth. Originally a border stronghold, at the beginning of the nineteenth century the city was a seat of local government, a market town and a major port, its waterfront crowded with warehouses and quays and its river filled with ships, coasters, fishing smacks and distinctive local craft called ‘keels’. When Trotter and his new wife arrived to take up residence, Newcastle was still essentially a mediaeval city, though in Georgian times it had begun to spread beyond the...

Trotter’s Essay on Drunkenness, or to give the full title An Essay, Medical, Philosophical and Chemical on Drunkenness and its Effects on the Human Body was published in 1804.¹ Further British editions appeared in 1807, 1810 and 1812. It was published in the United States, and achieved translations into German and Swedish. Copies of the original 1804 edition are today greatly sought after by collectors of rare books. A facsimile edition was published in 1988, with a useful introduction by the medical historian Roy Porter, and is much more accessible.² The 1804 volume derived from, and greatly extended, the Latin...

On an autumn day in early November 1805, Trotter found himself in Jarrow, then a small village, some 6 miles from Newcastle on the road to South Shields. As he approached St Paul’s church he became aware that the burial ground was filled with a multitude of grim-faced people. He paused to watch, and realized that he was witnessing the results of a mining disaster. A fortnight before, on 21 October, underground gases in the nearby colliery of Hebburn had exploded, killing thirty-five mine workers, the youngest aged only sixteen. The tragedy had left twenty-five widows and eighty-one orphans.¹ Funerals...

In 1807, three years after the Essay on Drunkenness had reached the bookshops, Trotter published another major text, with the same kind of joint lay and professional readership intended. The full title of the new book was A View of the Nervous Temperament being a Practical Enquiry into the Increasing Prevalence, Prevention and Treatment of those Diseases commonly called Nervous, Bilious, Stomach and Liver Complaints, Indigestion, Low Spirits, Gout etc.¹ – a title virtually as synopsis. Further editions appeared in 1807 and 1812. A facsimile edition appeared in 1976 in an American ‘Classics in Psychiatry’ series.² The choice of James...

As well as his large accomplishments as a medical author, Trotter wrote poetry throughout his life and was the author of a play. He made his debut as a poet when aged only sixteen, with verses published in an Edinburgh newspaper. He continued to write poetry throughout his adult life and in 1829 collected his traceable compositions into a volume called Sea Weeds, with the sub-title Poems written on various occasions, chiefly during a naval life.¹ The ‘M.D.’ was as ever put after his name, and Trotter identified himself as ‘Physician of the Fleet’. Facing the title page is a...

Trotter was busy while he lived in Newcastle. The production of a succession of medical works, their preparation for republication in numerous editions and the demands of private practice took up all his time. He was a member of the Literary and Philosophical Society and opened his door regularly to offer free treatment to the poor, but he did not occupy any official position in the locality. He did, however, write occasionally on medical matters to the newspapers, as in 1816 when Newcastle was smitten with smallpox. In July and September, the Courant published open letters from him to the...