A sick bay is a compartment in a ship used for medical purposes — the ship's hospital.
The sick bay will contain the ship's medicine chest which may be divided into separate cabinets such as a refrigerator for medicines which require cold storage and a locked cabinet for controlled substances such as morphine. The sick bay and the medicine chest should be kept locked, with the keys only being available to the medical officer and the ship's master.
The term is also applied ashore by the United States Navy and Marine Corps to treatment clinics on naval stations and Marine bases.
Sick bays appear in popular science fiction franchises, such as Battlestar Galactica or the Star Trek series, as the medical facility on board a starship.
Famous quotes containing the words sick and/or bay:
“I presume that you are compassionate: to be without pity means to be sick in body and spirit. But one should have spirit in abundance, so as to be permitted to be compassionate! For your pity is detrimental to you and to everyone.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900)
“Baltimore lay very near the immense protein factory of Chesapeake Bay, and out of the bay it ate divinely. I well recall the time when prime hard crabs of the channel species, blue in color, at least eight inches in length along the shell, and with snow-white meat almost as firm as soap, were hawked in Hollins Street of Summer mornings at ten cents a dozen.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)