“MAL-DE-MER,”

Evening Star, Issue 19666, 20 September 1927, Page 1

“MAL-DE-MER,”

• -fSEA SICKNESS AND THE FAMOUS (,)f all Ihe ills to which the llc.-h is heir none perliiip.-. i.- more dreaded than 1 1 1,ii nil-100-common complaint, whii-h onff grandfathers railed " nial-de-mer,” and which we. less enphemisiicallv, describe as "seasickness,'’ The very anticipation of it, is apt. to deprive ns ot onr relish tor a holiday. Various remedies have luen suggested The)- range from the eaiing ol all apple to the' drinking of a gln.-s of wine mixed will) sea water—-the hitler of which expedient, is suggested in an old honiinopaihic medical hook, ‘The Behool of SalTIIK POETRY CURE. Probably, however, the most original method of avoiding sea sickness was that, resorted to hv the late Protcssov Henry ISidgwick. Sklgwick, according to Dr A. C. Henson, when crossing tho Channel, used to ‘Make his stand in some secluded pari, of the vessel, and to pour mil audibly and rhetorically his repertory of English verse, accompanying it with a good deal o) emphatic gesticulation." He said that he could go <m repealing poetry continuously, it he did not force Inc pace, for about a couple of hours. I believe that the first experiment was suecesslul, and that, he seenred imnnmiiy from nausea, tint he. said that, the second lime that, he tried it, he was interrupted by one of tho officers, with a message from tho captain bogging him to desist,, on tbc ground (hat some of the lady passengers were frightened by his behaviour, being under the impression that he was mentally deranged. This tendency of the brain to succumb to “ physical sensations,” when the, body is at sea, is shared by all classes of the community.- Not even kings are immune. King John, for instance, was a great sufferer from sen sickness, and it is on record that he granted an estate at Kepperton, in Kent, to a certain Solomon Attifield on condition that “ as often as the King should he pleased to cross the sea the said Solomon or his heirs should ho obliged to go wilh hi into hold His Majesty’s head if he should he sea sick.” EVEN AN ARCHBISHOP. Great and respected prelates have been known to suffer from this most devastating of complain Is. The, laic Charles Brookfield in his ‘ Random Reminiscences,’ has recalled an excursion when, as a boy of fourteen, he, crossed from Gala is to Dover on tho same boat with the two Archbishops Tatf. and Thomson. He wrote: We. had a. very rough crossing- so rough that a very few minutes after we had left the French port there came a. premonitory tap, and the window of my mother's deck cabin was lowered from outside, and the curly, bedecked head of the Archbishop of York discreetly bowed . into the apartment, and from beneath its generous brim a voice of pride, modulated bv charitv, proclaimed “my brother of Canterbury has already succumbed,” and tho window was drawn up again. Sea sickness Inis not been a subject which has appealed to the poets—for obvious reasons—but one cannot conclude without at least a reference to what is perhaps the most realistic description of sea sickness— Kupert Brooke’s 1 Channel Crossing.