Sea voyagers who last week wanly looked at their stateroom ceilings or hung dejectedly over ship rails, wished from their hearts that everyone knew as much about seasickness and its prevention as does Dr. P. H. Desnoes, port medical officer at Manhattan for the United Fruit Co. Dr. Desnoes has been having the company ship-doctors gather data on the malady, known also as mal de mer and nausea marma, to which most people, even sailors, are subject. He as found that there are five theories for its causation: 1) the labyrinthine (the ear contains two tiny sacs, the utricle and the saccule, and three semicircular canals, all of which aid in special orientation); 2) "muscle sense" disturbance (the muscle nerves localize in space the position of the limbs, head, eyes and other parts of the body); 3) eyestrain (the patient gets dizzy looking at the ever-changing sea); 4) peripheral vagus-nerve irritation (the insides get shaken up by the complicated motion of the boat and by the minute, incessant vibration of the engines); and 5) psychic stimuli (the patient sees others kharouping and vomiting over the rail and gets sick). All influence to varying degrees the maelstrom of nausea. Most nostrums hit at only one of the causes and so are frequently inefficacious.
Dr. Desnoes gives a beautiful clinical picture of the symptomatology in the Journal of the American Medical Association:
"The symptoms of seasickness are too well known to merit detailed description. Suffice it to list the following, which may come on in an ordinary case, from six to thirty-six hours after departure, normal weather conditions prevailing: discomfort in the epigastric region, varying with the rise and fall of the ship; anorexia; salivation, with frequent swallowing movements; headache, dizziness; weakness, progressing to faintness; cold perspiration of the skin, and pallor of the face, with the oft-described greenish hue. The facial expression, which is one of great dejection and apathy, faithfully records the internal feelings. Waves of nausea finally get so strong that the desire to vomit is overwhelming, and after that act is consummated great relief is experienced. The vomiting is very often projectile in character, and there may be little or no nausea preceding. Objectively, one usually finds a strong, slow pulse with increased blood pressure in the early stages, and later a lowered blood pressure with rapid pulse.