Particularly for some reading the novel for the first time, also for those of us who have read them before.
Initially, please box spoilers. We’ll see how things work out.
Royal Navy Lieutenant Jack Aubrey meets Physician Stephen Maturin at a concert at Port Mahon.
How far along are the first timers?
I’ve read the first book and am waiting for #2 and #3 in the mail, as well as the companion book with all the info on the terminology, etc.
I knew from the first scene that I was going to enjoy the book, the way Maturin responded to Aubrey’s “appreciation” of the music. This was reinforced with their discussion about punishment for the sailor who sexed up the goat.
A couple of questions:
Did Aubrey really get just one epaulet? He doesn’t get the balancing second epaulet until he’s Master and Commander?
What’s the distinction between physician and surgeon? You were one or the other, or could you be both? I get the impression that a surgeon wasn’t as highly thought of as a physician, maybe one step up from a barber.
I believe you got to shift it to the other side after a certain period of time. The Royal Navy was very concerned with seniority. It was of course an indication of how experienced a Captain was, for what that’s worth.
Indeed, barbers not long before bled customers as well as cutting hair. Butchers literally became surgeons, since the primary task was amputation due to wood splinters from cannon fire. Well, there was venereal treatment, too.
While physicians had been educated and dissected bodies, the essay by a modern physician in A Sea of Words assures us that Dr. Maturin couldn’t have helped his patients with bleeding and Jesuit’s bark.
According to the books the custom changes not too long (a decade or so?) after Jack gets his first command. Eventually when a certain person (and this really is a bit of a spoiler, btw, so don’t peek if you haven’t read about 10 books or so in)…
Pullings! Finally!…gets his commission he has two epaulets right away.
I vaguely remember that…I’m looking forward to discussing all the books.
Are you named after the car or the Robert Johnson Blues song?
Your spoiler reminds me of seamen summoned to carry away someone who has wetted his swab, that is, become intoxicated celebrating his promotion. I can’t remember if it is Bonden or Killick who asks Jack, “Catatonic, Sir?”
The song, though after hearing it I looked up the car and they’re not a bad namesake either, pretty cool machines.
I thought he got one epaulet as commander and then the other when he was made post captain. Thus the other promotion mentioned above may have been directly from lieutenant to captain. For all love, I don’t remember why Aubrey was made commander first. Maybe some lingering suspicion about him from his rowdy junior-officer years?
That was true in the Middle Ages (even though the surgeons were probably more effective), but I don’t know how much it remained so in Maturin’s day. He’s referred to as a Naval surgeon, right? And yet he’s highly respected as a medical man and a natural philosopher.
I thought it was an interesting comment on the society of the time that even though Maturin is a doctor, he’s on the road to starvation at the beginning of the book because his prospective patient had died before he got there.
There are a few times when Maturin’s approach to medicine seems a bit too modern, but O’Brian does throw in some nice touches to remind us that Maturin is still a doctor of his time (spoilered since they come from later books):
[spoiler]At one point, Maturin has lunch with a medical colleague whom he had treated some time back for some problem, and he exclaims “I should like to examine your stools!”
Also, on one long voyage we see Maturin making a point of regular bloodletting for all the men and officers.[/spoiler]
I think every person promoted from Lieutenant had to go through that, at least according to the book. You become a commander, if you’re lucky you get a sloop, and if you do well with that you get to be a true post-captain and maybe move up to a frigate.
The person I mentioned, I’m pretty sure, didn’t have any more rank or power than Aubrey when he got his first commission. I know that it’s specifically mentioned that his career outlook was extremely bleak because there was so much competition at that level; there were something like 4 times as many commanders as available sloops.
Post Captains with 3+ years of seniority got to wear two epaulets.
wiki “Epaulettes first appeared on British uniforms in the second half of the 18th century. The epaulette was officially incorporated into Royal Navy uniform regulations in 1795, although some officers wore them before this date. Flag Officers were to wear silver stars on their epaulettes to distinguish their ranks. Captains with at least three years seniority were to have plain epaulettes, the Junior Captains and Commanders having only one apiece to be worn on the right and left shoulders respectively.”
If anybody is just starting this series for the first time, the chart on this page concerning watches, bells and their corresponding times of day was extremely helpful for me. For a few books there I was never quite sure when anything was happening.
I love how that page manages to slip in one of my favourite Aubrey/Maturin pieces of humour.
Also a bit in Master and Commander where…Maturin and a collegue, after a fine afternoon dissecting a dolphin and a human drowning victim (at adjoining tables), break for lunch. They need a knife to cut some of the bread, and since they’re in the lab already…well, Stephen basically says “nah, we don’t need to wash it. Just wipe it off.” :eek:
And that reminds me of the seaman who kills himself, I think in The Maritius Command, with his birthday present: a portion of grog donated from each of his many messmates.
The various crews are always proud to be carrying a physician aboard ship rather than a mere surgeon.
I don’t think Stephen’s medicine is modern at all. He bleeds and purges people. He doses them with all manner of hideous medicines, almost all of which are useless. He promotes the use of tobacco and cocaine, although he decries the vast amount of alcohol served to the crew and he recognizes the danger of addiction to opium. And while he speaks about the need for “clean” bandaging, he spits on his hands when preparing to use his unwashed surgical tools. But he does lecture Jack often for eating too much and drinking too much, warning him that big, red-faced, blustery men such as himself often die of an apoplexy.
His attitude towards women is pretty modern, however, and he dismisses superstition, although he is a devout Catholic.
“Prepare the turpentine enemata!”
“The Captain has a very genteel figgar.”
Good timing for me as i’m on about page 258 - a first time reader.
Early days but I think O’Brian has a real air of assuredness. Liked the opening line of the Author’s Note:
When one is writing about the Royal Navy of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it is difficult to avoid understatement; it is difficult to do full justice to one’s subject; for so very often the improbable reality outruns fiction.
Looking forward to the ride!
These books cry out to be quoted, don’t they?
I’ve just read the first couple of chapters, and even aside from those fateful first meetings of Jack and Stephen, it’s really charming to see what a great sampling of the series there is in such a short space. And the introduction of Babbington, Pullings, Mowett and Killick!
Jack greets Stephen with “There you are” for the first of 65 times in the series (I had never noticed it until I read that statistic in The Butcher’s Bill).
In chapter 2, Jack tells Stephen that it’s customary to draw an advance upon one’s pay upon appointment, and hands Stephen some money. (“What a humane regulation.”) Is that true, do you think, or did Jack invent that because Stephen is broke?
From O’Brian’s “Men Of War”, the epaulette:
(Upon becoming Post Captain)
This time he does not need to buy a new uniform: his old coat will do, and all that is needed is to shift his epaulette from his left shoulder to his right, with the comforting reflection (if his promotion is before 1812) that when he is a captain of three years seinority he will wear two…
No word here or in A Sea of Words about advance pay for Surgeons.
“The music room in the Governor’s house at port Mahon, a tall, handsome pillared octogon…”
I have begun again, to discuss with the newbies. I am tempted by other novels, but don’t want to spoil things for new readers.
I always took it as probably an actual regulation, but that in this case Jack effectively reached into his own pocket for it.