Looking for resources to fill your descriptions with historically-accurate gruesome?
HERE is the link to a colloquial discussion of medicine at sea during the Great Age of Piracy in the Caribbean.
For those wanting to read primary sources, here is the Google Books scan of John Moyle's guide to naval surgery from 1693. And Mark Kehoe of "The Pirate Surgeon's Journal" has collected an extensive bibliography of both primary and secondary sources, and has an excellent summary of historical pirate surgeons..