“Cocaine was dripped in the eye to cure snowblindness, and chalk ground up with opium was used for diarrhoea. No antibiotics in 1907 of course. Perhaps the only medications that Shackleton carried that we would still use today were aspirin and morphine.” — Gavin Francis
More on polar medicine in the Heroic Age:
“Shackleton’s Medical Kit” by Gavin Francis in Granta
“Cocaine for Snowblindness” by Maria Godoy in NPR
“Drugs in History and Culture” by Joanna Bourke in The Lancet
Right to left: Alistair Mackay, Edgeworth David (pulling string for shutter), Douglas Mawson.
The Magnetic South Pole, 72º 25′ South, longitude 155º 16′ East, reached on 17 January 1909.
9 January 1909: we reached our Furthest Point South, 88º 23 S. 162º E.; 97.5 nautical miles from the South Pole. We planted the flag and left a box of my Antarctic stamps, then turned around for the return to base.
Left to right: Adams, Wild, and Shackleton (photo taken by Marshall).
Date of issue: 1 January 1908.
“These stamps were used by the Shackleton Antarctic Expedition of 1908. The 1 penny universal stamp was overprinted ‘King Edward VII Land’ by Coulls, Culling & Co.”
– from New Zealand Post website
“Lieutenant E H Shackleton, R.N.R. (later Sir Ernest Shackleton), had intended making his base camp in King Edward VII Land in the Antarctic but on failing to find a suitable landing place he made his base at McMurdo Sound, which was in fact in Victoria Land. The Expedition left England in the ‘Nimrod’ on 7 August 1907. Its last port of call en route to Antarctica was Lyttleton, New Zealand, where final departure for the southern continent was made on 1 January 1908. Lieutenant Shackleton was appointed to be a Postmaster by the New Zealand Government and was provided with a special date stamp – the date stamp read “Brit. Antarctic Expedition” in a circle with “NZ”, time and date in four lines in the centre.”
– New Zealand Post website
Act III, Scene II. Belmont. A Room in Portia’s House.
“So may the outward shows be least themselves:
The world is still deceived with ornament…
How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false
As stairs of sand wear yet upon their chins
The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars
Who, inwards searched, have livers white as milk;
And these assume but valour’s excrement to render them redoubted!”
— The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare [Full play online]
“The whole place seems so strange and unlike anything else in the world…when the hazy clouds spring silently from either hand and drift quickly across our zenith not followed by any wind it seems almost uncanny. Then comes a puff of wind…seemingly to obey no law acting on erratic impulses. It seems as though we were truly at the worlds end and were bursting in on the birthplace of the clouds and the nesting home of the four winds and that we mortals were being watched with a jealous eye by these children on Nature.”
— Ernest Shackleton
Books taken on the Nimrod Expedition’s polar dash, 1908-09:
Shakespeare’s Comedies — Ernest Shackleton
The Bible in Spain by George Borrow — Eric Marshall
Travels in France by Arthur Young — Reginald Adams
Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens — Frank Wild
On the Discovery Expedition’s polar dash (1902-03), Shackleton took along The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin and read it aloud to Scott.
Shackleton, Adams, Marshall, and Wild, heading south with ponies, Nimrod Expedition, 1908.
Setting out, 1908: The Nimrod Expedition’s Polar Team consisted of Ernest Shackleton, Jameson Adams, Eric Marshall (the expedition doctor) and Frank Wild.
[Photo from Public Domain Review]
Packing crates were used for bindings.
Photos from the antarctic-circle‘s auction list, and Museum Victoria.
Shackleton. 