Rough Medicine: Life and Death in the Age of Sail will open at the WA Maritime Museum on 11 June, 2016.

WA Museum CEO Alec Coles said the exhibition explores the fascinating history of how illness impacted upon and even shaped early sea voyages from the 17^th Century until the advent of the steamship in the late 19^th Century.

“Sickness could render a voyage anything from uncomfortable to horrific, or even fatal. Disease spread rapidly in cramped quarters, drinking water was often polluted, food perished and new climates brought new ailments from heatstroke to malaria with few escaping a visit to the ship’s surgeon,” Mr Coles said.

“An eye-watering array of surgical instruments features in this absorbing and sometimes confronting exhibition. Ship surgeons carried an array of instruments including saws to amputate limbs, a procedure that only one in three people survived; a cork-screw like trephine to remove sections of skull; tooth keys to break off teeth at their roots; and it was recommended that every ship carried a jar of at least 50 leeches to bleed patients and rebalance the ‘humours’. 

Mr Coles said until ether was trialled in 1846, operations were conducted without anaesthetic and the surgeon’s most prized skill was speed.

Rough Medicine: Life and Death in the Age of Sail explores immigrant voyages that are part of the histories of thousands of Australians. The exhibition brings together an extraordinary collection that includes passengers’ letters and diaries, surgeons’ journals and artefacts including bone syringes used to inject mercury, surgical kits, even jars of parasites and leeches.

Rough Medicine is a free exhibition developed, designed and toured by the South Australian Maritime Museum. This travelling exhibition is supported by Visions Australia and will be on display at the WA Maritime Museum until 28 August, 2016. Entry fees apply to other WA Maritime Museum galleries.