Text 1: Everything I tried on my week at sea, by Nadia Forsyth

An original contemporary blog.

When my friends invited me on a week’s sailing holiday along the west coast of Scotland, I said yes before I remembered that I get sick on swings. Here, in the interests of science, is everything I tried.

Day one: acupressure wristbands, which press on a point on the inside of your wrist. They looked nice. They did nothing. Day two: ginger biscuits and ginger tea, which helped a little, or at least gave me something to do.

What really worked, according to our skipper, Lachlan, was staying up on deck in the fresh air and keeping busy. Below deck, where the cabin swings around you and your eyes and your inner ear disagree about what is happening, I lasted about four minutes. He also made me steer, because concentrating on the course sometimes helps, and it helped me.

By day three I had found a pharmacy and some travel sickness tablets, which the pharmacist explained I should take before sailing, following the packet instructions, rather than wait until I was already green. They made me sleepy but steady.

And on day four, for no reason anyone can explain, my body simply gave up complaining. Lachlan says most people get their sea legs in two to three days. Nobody warned me that the first three would feel like a fortnight.

Text 2: On the malady of the sea, by Dr Septimus Stansfield

An original guidebook written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

This extract comes from a book of advice for travellers making sea voyages, published in 1878.

Of all the miseries to which the traveller is exposed, sea sickness is the most common and the least pitied, for the sufferer is invariably laughed at by those who are well. I have tried most of the remedies offered for it, and I must say plainly that there is no certain cure.

The best defence is to lie flat upon one’s back as soon as the vessel begins to move, with the head low and the eyes closed, and to remain so until the motion ceases. Ladies, in particular, should keep to their berths. The middle of the ship moves least, and a berth there is worth a higher fare.

Many persons go to sea fasting, imagining that an empty stomach can suffer less. This is a great mistake. A plain meal of cold meat and dry biscuit should be taken an hour before sailing, and a little iced champagne, in sips, will often be kept down when nothing else will. Brandy I do not recommend. A broad band of flannel worn tightly about the waist is thought by some to steady the stomach.

Above all, the traveller should not stand at the rail watching the waves rise and fall, nor go below into a close and stuffy saloon. Fresh air upon deck, in a sheltered place, is more useful than every remedy sold by the chemists. In most cases the sickness passes in two or three days.

Using information from both texts, explain briefly what the writers suggest about dealing with seasickness.

You should make it clear which text you are referring to.