Health, medicine, and the sea : Australian voyages, c.1815-1860 /Katherine Foxhall.

"Health, medicine, and the sea explores how convicts, emigrants and the surgeons responsible for their welfare created medical knowledge at sea in the first half of the nineteenth century. The book focuses on individual and collective stories to offer a new framework for understanding the centrality of health to the history of colonial settlement. The narrative follows the voyage route from the ports of Britain and Ireland, around Africa, through the Atlantic and southern oceans, to the shores of the Australian colonies. Touching on themes such as environmental knowledge, invalidity, epidemics, penal reform, sailor's culture, working-class mistrust of medical men and their experiments, and the politics of immigration, the book offers a fresh and engaging approach to the fascinating social and cultural history of colonial voyaging."--Back cover.