| Description | Boylston writes: 'The most learned part of mankind are still at a loss about many things, even in medical use; and, particularly, were so in what is called ambergris, until our whale fisherman of Nantucket.' He describes how 'the ambergris is when first taken out moist and of an exceedingly strong and offensive smell.'
Subject: Zoology / Ambergris
Read to the Royal Society on 11 February 1724
Published in Philosophical Transactions as 'Ambergris found in whales. Communicated by Dr. Boylston of Boston in New-England' |