Diary of Ezra Green, M.D. from November 1, 1777, to September 27, 1778

Green, Ezra, 1746-1847Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.9

Word count: 79K words
Chapters: 8

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Diary of Ezra Green, M.D. from November 1, 1777, to September 27, 1778 by GreenAuthor: Green, Ezra, 1746-1847,Language: English, Class: E201: History: America: Revolution (1775-1783), Release Date: May 23, 2011

Editor's review

This is the diary of Ezra Green, a ship's surgeon during the American Revolutionary War, spanning November 1777 to September 1778—a short but information-dense primary source. Written almost day by day, it records voyages, weather, sick crew members, supplies, and routine affairs in plain, unrevised language, preserving the raw texture of wartime life at sea. For researchers, it sheds light on medical practice, disease patterns, and crew conditions aboard Continental Navy or privateer vessels; for general readers, it offers a war perspective far from battle narratives—history accumulated from small records. Read it as a historical source rather than literature, paying attention to the correspondence of dates, places, and names, and use it alongside a Revolutionary War chronology.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Scholars studying maritime activity and military medical history during the American Revolutionary War
History readers interested in diaries, autobiographies, and other primary sources
History students needing original materials for course papers
Maritime history enthusiasts interested in 18th-century seafaring life and crew routines

Not a good fit for

Beginners in military history expecting a full war narrative or battle analysis
General readers who prefer literary description and plot-driven writing
Readers who find the original English diary difficult and have no annotations

Reading tips

First consult a chronology of major events of the Revolutionary War in 1777–1778, then read the diary to establish spatial and temporal coordinates.
Keep a notebook to record dates, ship names, place names, and people, clarifying the route and relationships among individuals.
Extract illness and treatment records separately for focused analysis as medical history material.
There is no need to read day by day; select sections by theme—medicine, navigation, or daily supplies—according to interest.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What period does the diary cover?

According to the title and materials, the diary runs from November 1, 1777, to September 27, 1778—about eleven months. Entries are arranged by day; the detail of individual entries should be checked against the electronic text.

Is this diary suitable as a research source?

Yes. It is a contemporaneous primary record useful for examining maritime medicine, crew life, and everyday wartime experience. Bear in mind its personal perspective and the incidental nature of its records, and avoid overgeneralizing.

What background knowledge is needed first?

It is advisable to first grasp the basic course of the American Revolutionary War, the general situation of the Continental Navy and privateers, and common knowledge of 18th-century seafaring and medicine. With this background, the diary's scattered records become easier to connect into meaningful threads.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Green, Ezra, 1746-1847 Author · American · 1746–1847

Ezra Green (1746–1847) was a naval surgeon during the American Revolutionary War, known to later readers through a single shipboard diary. The work, titled Diary of Ezra Green, M.D. from November 1, 1777, to September 27, 1778, records his day-to-day experiences at sea, touching on maritime medicine, voyages, and aspects of naval life at the time. Green was not known as an author, and only this one work is held in the collection; available public information is limited, making it difficult to describe the details of his life. Nevertheless, as a first-hand source, the diary offers useful insight into medical service and seafaring life in the American Navy during the Revolutionary War, and its plain, day-by-day style typifies the record-keeping of shipboard surgeons of the period.