such persons as serve the king or others at sea by navigation and fighting ships, &c. See MARITIME State.

Scamen fighting, quarrelling, or making any disturbance, may be punished by the commissioners of the navy with fine and imprisonment. Registered seamen are exempted from serving in any parish office, &c. and are allowed bounty-money beside their pay. By the law of merchants, the seamen of a vessel are accountable to the master or commander, the master to the owners, and the owners to the merchants, for damage sustained either by negligence or otherwise. Where a seaman is hired for a voyage, and he deserts before it is ended, he shall lose his wages; and in case a ship be lost in a storm, the seamen lose their wages, as well as the owners their freight.

Means of Preserving the Health of SEAMEN. See MEDICINE, No 351.

In addition to what has been said on this subject in the place referred to, we shall subjoin some valuable observations which we have met with in the sixth volume of the Memoirs of the Royal Society of Medicine at Paris for the years 1784 and 1785.

In 1783, the maréchal de Cafries, intending to make some changes in the regulations of the navy, particularly with regard to diet, proposed to the society the two following questions: 1. "What are the most wholesome aliment for seamen, considering the impossibility of procuring them fresh meat? And what kinds of salt meat or fish, of pulse, and of drink, are most proper for them, and in what quantity, not omitting to inquire into the regimen in use amongst other maritime nations for what may be adopted by us, and into what experience has evinced the utility of, from the accounts of the most celebrated navigators?" 2. "A number of patients labouring under different diseases being assembled in naval hospitals, and different constitutions affected by the same disease requiring difference of diet, what general dietetic rules for an hospital would be best adapted to every exigence, dividing the patients into three classes; the first in which liquids alone are proper, the second in which we begin to give solids in small quantities, and the state of convalescence in which a fuller diet is necessary?" A committee was appointed to draw up an answer to these, who investigated the subject very minutely. The result of their labours is there given at large. The observations most worthy of notice are, that the sourry of the English seamen, who live chiefly on salt-meat, is a putrid disease; whilst that of the Dutch, who use farinaceous vegetables and dried pulse in large quantities, has more of an hydrotropical tendency. A mixture of both, even at the same meal, is recommended. This is supported by philosophical reasoning, and the example of Captain Cook, who was partly indebted to this mixed regimen for the preservation of his crew. Salt fish should never be used: salt beef grows hard, and after boiling its fibrous parts only remain, which are more calculated to load the stomach than recruit the strength. Salt bacon may be kept at sea 18 months; it does not lose its moist and nutritional parts, and unites better with pulse, but should not be used when rancid. Live animals kept on board ships tend to produce diseases amongst the crew. Rice should be used largely. Our puddings are bad food: the flour would be much better made into bread, which might be done at sea, with no great trouble. Sour kruit should be used freely. Mustard, vinegar, sugar, maceflakes, and honey, are good antiscorbutics. Of drinks, wine is the best: wort, spruce-beer, or the Ruffian quas, are good substitutes. Spirits are only to be used in cold climates, and in small quantity. The greater part of the excellent memoir in answer to the second question, perfectly coincides with M. Duhamel du Monceaux's "Means of Preserving the Health of Seamen," and M. Poissonnier des Perrieres's treaties "On the Diseases of Scamen," and "On the advantages of changing the Diet of Scamen," and his "Examination of Pringle's Dissertations."