Book ID: CBB474045645

First Fleet Surgeon: The Voyage of Arthur Bowes Smyth (2015)

unapi

In a single leather-bound volume of 238 unlined pages of parchment, Surgeon Arthur Bowes Smyth describes his two-and-a-half year journey with the First Fleet from Portsmouth in England to the new colony in Australia and back. He is a frank, articulate and observant writer, and his diary, a treasure of the National Library of Australia, covers life at sea, stopovers in the slave port of Rio de Janeiro and the tropical paradise of Tahiti, and three months of early settlement in Australia. As surgeon to more than 100 convict women on the Lady Penrhyn, Bowes Smyth gives an insight into the plight of these women, sentenced to transportation, and their children. In First Fleet Surgeon, author David Hill brings to life the voyage of the Lady Penrhyn and the early months of settlement at Port Jackson (modern-day Sydney) through Bowes Smyth's colourful language and frank anecdotes. Each chapter includes a page of Bowes Smyth's handwritten diary entries accompanied by a full transcript, and is richly illustrated with paintings, lithographs and maps from the National Library of Australia's collection. Information boxes on subjects such as eighteenth-century medical knowledge, brewing beer on board, and a surgeon's typical day provide context to Bowes Smyth's story

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Reviewed By

Review Angeline Brasier (2015) Review of "First Fleet Surgeon: The Voyage of Arthur Bowes Smyth". Historical Records of Australian Science (pp. 207-208). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB474045645/

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Authors & Contributors
Orchiston, Wayne
Darroch, Sandra
Churchill, Jennie
Loring, Lorna M.
Jones, Jennifer
Wadi, Yonissa
Concepts
Surgery
Physicians; doctors
Medicine
Diaries
Sea travel
Biographies
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, late
18th century
20th century, early
20th century
Early modern
Places
Australia
England
Sydney (Australia)
New Zealand
East Indies
Great Britain
Institutions
Royal College of Surgeons, London
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) (Australia)
Auckland Institute and Musem
Sydney Observatory
International Astronomical Union (IAU)
National Health Service (Great Britain)
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