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Manchineel Spring — San Juan 1780

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Manchineel Spring — San Juan 1780

Generated illustration. Not a historical photograph. A sailing fleet. Not a river, a tree, or a portrait.

Overview

Hinchinbrook San Juan Mortality — 1780 already records the crew-mortality figure. This note covers the manchineel-spring poisoning only. A later medical diagnosis and the river forts stay on RESEARCH_QUEUE.1

The Spring

Southey says Nelson had ordered his hammock slung under some trees and was sleeping when a monitory lizard passed across his face. The Indians, knowing what it indicated, awoke him; he started up and found one of the deadliest serpents of the country coiled up at his feet. He suffered from poison of another kind: drinking at a spring in which some boughs of the manchineel had been thrown, the effects were so severe as, in the opinion of some of his friends, to inflict a lasting injury upon his constitution.2

The two-hundred / ten-survived figure stays on Hinchinbrook San Juan Mortality — 1780. Caribbean malaria as a named disease stays on Malaria — Nelson in the Caribbean. This page does not diagnose the later injury.

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Footnotes

  1. Complement two hundred; not more than ten survived: Hinchinbrook San Juan Mortality — 1780. ↩

  2. “He suffered from poison of another kind; for drinking at a spring in which some boughs of the manchineel had been thrown, the effects were so severe, as, in the opinion of some of his friends, to inflict a lasting injury upon his constitution.” @southey1813nelson vol. 1, p. 35 (1813). Do not add a modern diagnosis or the river-fort names on this page. ↩

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