Miscellanies, approximately 1805

Spine embossed "Vol. 1" [?]. Bound volume of miscellaneous documents (1669-1805; bulk 1770s-1802) contains transcriptions and excerpts of articles, poems, magazines, books, and other sources, transcriptions of letters, reports, and a journal, a section of alphabetically arranged entries concerning a wide variety of persons and topics, and biographical sketches of various famous individuals, including English and French nobility. Subjects of transcriptions, excerpts, and alphabetical entries include medicine, reproductive biology, the sovereigns of Prussia and Russia, Napoleon Bonaparte, the Russian Navy, Jacques Louis David, and a many other topics. A large number of the lengthier transcriptions and extracts relate to the British Navy, its ships' surgeons, and its medical practices and polices. Included is a transcription (p. 455) of a manuscript entitled "A Journal of Occurrences on board His Majesty's Ship, the Leopard, Captain Surridge, in a Voyage to the East Indies between June 1798 and June 1799" by James Parker, the ship's surgeon. Other documents consist of reports by various ships' surgeons, a list of ships' names and their surgeons (with "remarks" for each entry), a report (n.d.) of the Commissioners of Naval Enquiry concerning the quarantine of ships ("lazarets"), letters and reports by British naval officers and officials (including remarks by Commodore Horatio Nelson "relative to himself on Feb. 14, 1797"), and a copy of a letter (1804 Oct. 13) by James Fullerton (surgeon of the HMS Prince) which concerns a "plan to supply the lower apartments of a ship with pure air" and includes a drawing of an air pump.