Buchan’s Domestic Medicine and Thomas Huggan, drunken surgeon of the Bounty

Abstract

The sixth-edition copy (1779) of William Buchan's Domestic Medicine that belonged to Thomas Huggan, surgeon of the Bounty (d.1788 at Tahiti), has been in the National Maritime Museum since 1963. This research note comments on the implications of annotations in it, briefly considers its owner in the context of the status of naval surgeons at the time, and provides hitherto unpublished information on his prior career history and connections.