Maritime medicine, together with its links to the development of empire, is a burgeoning area of historical interest and enquiry. This book, based on extensive original research, explores the history of health and medicine in maritime and imperial contexts in a key period, reflecting the growing professionalization of medicine at sea from the establishment of the Sick and Hurt Board to the end of the Victorian era. The chapters, written by leading expertsin the field, are grouped around two central themes: Royal Naval medical policy, administration and practice; and health and mortality relating to the migration of peoples across the globe, including slavery, emigration and indentured migration. The book will be of interest to a wide range of historians, particularly those working in the fields of maritime history, the history of medicine, and the history of colonialism and imperialism.

David Boyd Haycock was Curator of Seventeenth-Century Imperial and Maritime History at the National Maritime Museum, 2007-09, and has held research fellowships at the University of Oxford, the University of California, Los Angeles and theLondon School of Economics. He is author of William Stukeley: Science, Religion and Archaeology in Eighteenth Century England, which is published by Boydell and Brewer. Sally Archer is at the National Maritime Museum.

CONTRIBUTORS: Erica M. Charters, John Cardwell, Mick Crumplin, Pat Crimmin, Mark Harrison, Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, Ralph Shlomowitz, Simon J. Hogerzeil, David Richardson, Robin Haines, Laurence Brown, Radica Mahase.