The “cure” is worse than the disease
It wasn’t fun and games being an 18th-century pirate. Sure, there was always a party in Port Royal, Jamaica, or Nassau, Bahamas. But Piracy was hard and dangerous work before the party started. And pirates loved to party. Copious amounts of rum would be drunk. There was no shortage of prostitutes to help the degenerate seamen blow off steam. Too bad for the pirates, but there were no antibiotics.
Pirates feared “Bad Blood” more than they did cannon fire
There’s evidence that condoms have been around for thousands of years. Any doctor will tell you that wrapping the rascal is not always 100% effective. In the 18th Century, condoms were made from intestines from sheep and lambs. Condoms were expensive. Pirates did not always have access to them.
Mercury cure for syphilis
What the ship surgeon used was a syringe and mercury. I can’t imagine how drunk or how tight the surgeon had to strap down the patient. The surgeon administered via syringe through the urethra of the patient. Mercury is poisonous. It had to get out of the patient’s system. The doctor would prescribe purging.
Purging involved giving the patient emetics and laxatives. So, with everything else going on in the sick pirate’s body, He had to deal with vomiting and diarrhea. Physicians at the time believed in the humoral theory of medicine. They would prescribe medication to cause sweating. to cure or weaken the disease.
Naval Medicine 18th century
Another treatment used by doctors on pirate ships was salivation. doctors would apply mercury to the pirate’s mouth or give it as “Blue Mass pills.” The patient would drool quarts of spit a day. The side effects of mercury poisoning are no fun at all.
Pirates’ teeth would fall out because mercury rots teeth and gums. They would suffer from mouth ulcers so severe that they couldn’t eat. They would endure tremors, nerve damage, and kidney failure. Many pirates died from the cure, not the disease.
Many pirates were “Mad as a Hatter.”
There’s no way to tell, but there’s a good chance a lot of pirates were insane. Mercury causes brain damage. The phrase “Mad as a hatter” has a ring of truth. Untreated Syphilis attacks the brain. It causes brain damage that causes insanity years after infecting the patient. The pirate loses either way.
Sailors in the 18th century had a hard life. They worked hard, but they were often underpaid and mistreated by the captain and the ship’s officers. Piracy was a tempting line of work. For a while, it was fun, but whoring for debauchery has its price.
Ship surgeons did the best they could with the knowledge they had. VD has to be a miserable experience, but mercury poisoning is so much worse. If I were a pirate, I would rather die in combat taking a prize. But that’s just me.
Final Thought:
For a group of lawless sailors, the Age of Piracy was the time of their lives. It was a short life to be sure. If they didn’t die in battle, they most likely swung from the gallows. If they were unlucky, they caught a venereal disease and died in pain and misery after going insane. It’s not the romanticized life we grew up reading about. It was fun while it lasted, but the bill always comes due.
The Gruesome 18th-century Pirate Medical Devices found on Blackbeard’s Ship
Lawson Wallace is a freelance writer who specializes in Resumes, cover letters, blog posts, and emails. For inquiries, email him at lawsonwallacewrites@outlook.com
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