Some early Australian medical publications.

ON 12 MAY 1787, the First Fleet of eleven ships, commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip, the Governor-elect of the new colony, sailed from England to establish a penal settlement at Botany Bay, which had been visited by Cook only eighteen years before. This was to relieve the crowded gaols and prison hulks of the convicts who, but for the recent revolt of the American colonies, would have been sent there to slave in the plantations. The fleet, with 756 convicts and 258 soldiers and marines aboard, made the long voyage of 250 days, of which about a quarter was spent in ports on the way. The settlement was founded at Port Jackson on 26 January 1788, and for some years the weakened community, beset by disease and food shortage, struggled for subsistence. A group of some six contemporary accounts of this formative period, by officials and officers of the new colony, was published in London before the turn of the century. They have been called the incunabula of Australiana. These substantial works are all of prime importance to the medical-as well as the general history-of the period. For they give the background to medical practice, in addition to incidental references of medical interest.