Medical supplies were found on the famous Blackbeard pirate ship uncovered recently by archaeologists.
Jean Dubou, La Concorde de Nantes's surgeon major, who was captured by Blackbeard, and his aides were required to supply their own medical equipment on the ships, archaeologist Linda Carnes-McNaughton told Live Science. She said it's believed that Blackbeard, who's real name is Edward Teach, obtained this equipment when he captured the surgeons.
Among the medical equipment was a urethral syringe that would have been used to treat syphilis, two pump clysters to pump fluid into the rectum, and a porringer used for used in bloodletting treatments. They also found a cast brass mortarpestle, a silver needle, the remains of scissors, two pairs of brass set screws, and two sets of nesting weights.
"Treating the sick and injured of a sea-bound community on shipboard was challenging in the best of times," Carnes-McNaughton, who volunteers on the excavation project, wrote in a paper she presented recently at the Society for Historical Archaeology annual meeting.
Carnes-McNaughton added that it was common for people among Blackbeard's ship to suffer from "chronic and periodic illnesses, wounds, amputations, toothaches, burns and other indescribable maladies."
Health conditions were so bad on the ship that when Blackbeard turned the Queen Anne's Revenge into his flagship, he released most of the French crew members he had captured, but mandated the ship's three surgeons to stay, Carnes-McNaughton explained to Live Science. He also forced a few other specialized workers like carpenters and the cook to stay.
Although the surgeons captured on the ship had medical equipment, they couldn't do much to help the worsening health conditions until they had medicine to treat with.
Blackbeard got medicine on the ship in 1718 when he spent a week blockading the port of Charleston, South Carolina, Live Science reported. He got his hands on the medicine from the governor of South Carolina by threatening that he "would murder all their prisoners, send up their heads to the governor, and set the ships they had taken on fire," if the governor didn't deliver the medicine chest, according to an account on Blackbeard published by Capt. Charles Johnson in 1724, which was obtained by Live Science.
Blackbeard died shortly after getting the medicine in November 1718 when he was hunted down by the Royal Navy.
