Speaker 1: I was once again dreaming of fortune and success when
Speaker 1: my hopes were blasted by an attack of a terrible
Speaker 1: scourge that wrought destruction through the northern mines during the
Speaker 1: winter of eighteen forty eight forty nine land scurvy. I
Speaker 1: noticed its first attack upon myself by swelling and bleeding
Speaker 1: of the gums, followed by a swelling of both legs
Speaker 1: below the knee, and I was laid up in my tent,
Speaker 1: obliged to feed upon the very articles that had caused
Speaker 1: the disease, and growing daily weaker without any reasonable prospect
Speaker 1: of relief. I was almost in despair. With only a
Speaker 1: blanket between myself and the damp, cold earth, and a
Speaker 1: thin canvas to protect me from the burning sun by
Speaker 1: day and the heavy dews by night. I lay day
Speaker 1: after day enduring the most intense suffering from pain in
Speaker 1: my limbs, which were now becoming more swollen and were
Speaker 1: turning completely black. Above me rose those formidable hills which
Speaker 1: I must ascend ere I could obtain relief. I believe
Speaker 1: I should have died had not, by accident, discovered a remedy.
Speaker 1: In the second week of my illness, one of our
Speaker 1: party found strewn along a foot track, a quantity of
Speaker 1: beans which sprouted from the ground and were in leaf.
Speaker 1: Someone had probably dropped them. He gathered a quantity and
Speaker 1: I had them boiled and lived entirely on them for
Speaker 1: several days at the same time using a decoction of
Speaker 1: the bark of a spruce tree. These seemed to operate magically,
Speaker 1: and in a week I found myself able to walk,
Speaker 1: and with two companions, walked into Coloma. There living principally
Speaker 1: upon a vegetable diet, which I procured by paying three
Speaker 1: dollars per pound for potatoes. In a very short time
Speaker 1: I recovered.
Speaker 2: Wow, hi, Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh.
Speaker 1: And I'm Erin allman Updyke, and.
Speaker 2: You're listening to this podcast will kill you. So that
Speaker 2: was some scurvy, some scurves that was really fun. And
Speaker 2: also three dollars a pound for potato.
Speaker 1: I don't even think I pay that much today.
Speaker 2: You don't in an eighteen forty eight.
Speaker 1: That's like gotta be like what one hundred dollars today?
Speaker 2: I mean easily a thousand with inflation plus all the gold.
Speaker 1: But also magical potatoes.
Speaker 2: That yeah, truly truly, and we'll find out why.
Speaker 1: Soon so shortly.
Speaker 2: So today's episode we're going to be talking about scurvy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited.
Speaker 2: I'm really excited.
Speaker 1: This is our first real departure on our own from
Speaker 1: infectious disease. We've done crossovers where we talked about things
Speaker 1: other than infectious disease, but this is our first solo
Speaker 1: journey down a non infectious route.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. I think it's going
Speaker 2: to be great.
Speaker 1: I think so too.
Speaker 2: Actually, I know it's going to be great.
Speaker 1: Oh good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we're going to cover the biology, the history,
Speaker 2: and the current status question mark, question mark, question mark
Speaker 2: of scurvy. But before we do any of that, it's
Speaker 2: quarantiney time. Oh yeah, what are we drinking today?
Speaker 1: We're drinking the vitamin Sea Legs. I forgot it and
Speaker 1: then I remembered it and was overjoyed by the name.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Basically, it's a bunch of different citrus juices
Speaker 2: of your choosing, yep, vodka because it's made from potatoes exactly,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1: As always, we'll post the recipe on our Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Instagram, which you can find us there.
Speaker 2: So we've got our quarantini, but don't worry because we're
Speaker 2: also going to be providing a recipe.
Speaker 1: For our plus C burritas.
Speaker 2: I still like that name.
Speaker 1: It's a fine name. Anyways. That's our non alcoholic version
Speaker 1: of our quarantinies, and those will also be on our
Speaker 1: social media.
Speaker 2: Okay, so my drink's in my hand mine too. I
Speaker 2: am preventing myself from getting scurvy with this delicious cocktail. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I want to know what the heck how is
Speaker 2: this actually preventing me from getting scurvy? And what exactly
Speaker 2: is the beast of the disease.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to tell you.
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Speaker 1: Everybody knows what scurvy is, right? What do you think
Speaker 1: causes scurvy?
Speaker 2: Lack of Vitamin C?
Speaker 1: Lack of vitamin C boom like biology section over. Don't worry,
Speaker 1: We're gonna get into more detail than that. Okay, So
Speaker 1: the first thing that I want to say, and this
Speaker 1: is because I don't want for people to feel silly
Speaker 1: if they don't know this, because I wasn't sure that
Speaker 1: I knew the actual answer to this, And that is
Speaker 1: what the definition of a vitamin is. Like, I think
Speaker 1: I kind of knew, but I think having a good
Speaker 1: definition is a good place to start. So, a vitamin
Speaker 1: is essentially an organic compound that we cannot make ourselves,
Speaker 1: and therefore we have to get it from our diet.
Speaker 1: So unlike most animals, actually humans cannot synthesize their own
Speaker 1: vitamin C. Did you know that most other animals in
Speaker 1: the world make their own vitamin C? That they don't
Speaker 1: have to eat oranges, They don't have to worry about it.
Speaker 1: They just make their own from sugar glucose. The only
Speaker 1: animals that don't make their own vitamin C are primates,
Speaker 1: except for the lemurs who are special and still make
Speaker 1: their own. Guinea pigs and cabybaras and some bats and
Speaker 1: some birds and that's it. Everything else. Your dog, you
Speaker 1: don't have to share your oranges with them. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: make it themselves. That is so cool. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: just lost that ability And so thanks A lot evolution.
Speaker 1: Now we're dependent on oranges.
Speaker 2: Thanks evolution A way to go.
Speaker 1: So the fancy scientific name for vitamin C is a
Speaker 1: scorbic acid. Okay, we call it vitamin C because again
Speaker 1: it's a necessary part of our diet, so that makes
Speaker 1: it a vitamin. So the question is what does vitamin
Speaker 1: C do and why is it something that's so important?
Speaker 1: How can it end up causing a disease as gnarly
Speaker 1: as scurvy.
Speaker 2: That's why I'm sitting here.
Speaker 1: Okay, it turns out the vitamin C actually does quite
Speaker 1: a lot of things. And because I'm not a biochemist
Speaker 1: and this isn't a biochemistry podcast, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: get too I'm not going to get too in depth
Speaker 1: on exactly the mechanisms of what it does. But the
Speaker 1: most important thing that it does and the way that
Speaker 1: you get most of the symptoms of scurvy are its
Speaker 1: effects on collagen. So collagen is this protein that makes
Speaker 1: up almost everything in your bodies. So collagen makes up
Speaker 1: your skin, your tendons. It's the bottom layer in between
Speaker 1: all of your epithelial cells. So like in your bladder,
Speaker 1: there's collagen like lining the entire thing. It forms your bones,
Speaker 1: it's in your eyes, it's in your hair, Like everything
Speaker 1: in your body is in some way made up of collagen. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's a really really important protein, must be. And
Speaker 1: it's a protein that's made of three different strands. So
Speaker 1: it's three single proteins that have to twist together into
Speaker 1: this triple helix.
Speaker 2: Like a pull and peel twizzler.
Speaker 1: Yes, like a pull and peel twizzler in order to
Speaker 1: be strong, right, So you need like strong skin, strong.
Speaker 2: Bones, strong twizzlers.
Speaker 1: So what happens when you have a vitamin C. So
Speaker 1: what vitamin C does is it allows for that folding,
Speaker 1: for that twisting to happen, and for the bonds between
Speaker 1: those three strands of protein to be really strong. So
Speaker 1: without vitamin C, you can still make the strands of
Speaker 1: protein that make up collagen, but they can't bind together
Speaker 1: in the right way, so they're weak.
Speaker 2: I think everyone needs to go out buy a pack
Speaker 2: of pull on peel twizzlers and try to pull apart
Speaker 2: a single strand versus an entire rolled twizzlers.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's a great idea. Yeah, it's excellent.
Speaker 2: That shows collagen.
Speaker 1: Collagen boom boom, Oh my gosh, Aaron, way to go
Speaker 1: right now, biochemistry outreach. Oh yes, so yeah, So that's
Speaker 1: essentially the biggest, most important role of vitamin C in
Speaker 1: your body that we know about, Like we know all
Speaker 1: of the details of this, and so when you have
Speaker 1: a lack of vitamin C and you can't make strong collagen,
Speaker 1: things in your body literally start to fall apart. So
Speaker 1: let's walk through kind of the progression of how this happens.
Speaker 1: So another thing that's important about vitamin C is that
Speaker 1: it's water soluble, which means that when you ingest it,
Speaker 1: you can absorb a lot of it, most of it,
Speaker 1: some of it, but you can't hold on to it
Speaker 1: in your body for very long. It doesn't store in
Speaker 1: your fat tissues the way that some other vitamins do,
Speaker 1: So you pee out any excess vitamin C that you have,
Speaker 1: which means that you have to continually eat it, Like
Speaker 1: you have to eat vitamin C every day. You're not
Speaker 1: going to be able to like store up a whole
Speaker 1: bunch like something like vitamin B twelve you can have
Speaker 1: like huge stores of that in your body. So it
Speaker 1: could take a really, really really long time of being
Speaker 1: deficient in something like B twelve before you actually see
Speaker 1: any symptoms. But with vitamin C, even just about a
Speaker 1: month of having little to no vitamin C basically less
Speaker 1: than ten milligrams a day in your diet will lead
Speaker 1: to symptoms of scurvy. It'll deplete your stores and then
Speaker 1: you'll just be running on nothing. So here's what starts
Speaker 1: to happen. In about a month of no vitamin C.
Speaker 1: You'll start to feel really tired. You'll get lethargic, and
Speaker 1: if you're, for example, a sailor out on the rough seas,
Speaker 1: you won't be able to do things like howl in
Speaker 1: that jib or swab the deck thank you. That's what
Speaker 1: I was trying to do, and I can't remember the
Speaker 1: words word.
Speaker 2: I saw the motion, thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your captain will be like, swab the deck and
Speaker 1: you'll be like, ugh, but I'm so tired, my muscle's hurt,
Speaker 1: and you just won't want to and they'll probably throw
Speaker 1: you overboard and you'll die that way. But if you don't,
Speaker 1: then you'll just keep getting worse. You'll probably start to
Speaker 1: notice a rash, especially on your legs.
Speaker 2: Hence the name of our quarantini.
Speaker 1: Yeah, vitamin sea legs. So you'll notice this rash and
Speaker 1: it'll probably look like little red or purple spots or splotches,
Speaker 1: and then those splotches might get bigger and bigger until
Speaker 1: your whole leg looks like you just went on a
Speaker 1: terrible snowboarding accident. And it's like, no, have you never
Speaker 1: been snowboarding?
Speaker 2: Because sick reference bruh.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, you fall a lot, and then you
Speaker 1: end up with these bruises that are like the size
Speaker 1: of your entire butt cheek, but like you know where
Speaker 1: that came from, right, because you fell a lot. But
Speaker 1: with scurvy, you just wake up with these giant bruises
Speaker 1: and you're like, I didn't even fall, I haven't moved
Speaker 1: out of bed.
Speaker 2: And snowboarded in my dreams.
Speaker 1: Oh did you get bruises? Anyways, you'll have these giant bruises,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Your joints will start to hurt. Do you
Speaker 1: want to know why? Of course, your muscles are breaking
Speaker 1: down and bleeding into the spaces of your joints, and
Speaker 1: all those purple spots that you're seeing, that's tiny blood
Speaker 1: vessels just breaking and leaking blood into underneath your skin.
Speaker 2: Is it because they can't handle the pressure of like
Speaker 2: the blood flow, and the collagen is so weak.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, because you can't make any new collagen, and
Speaker 1: so collagen literally lines all of your blood vessels, Like
Speaker 1: the bottom of the cells of your blood vessels are
Speaker 1: made of collagen, and so yeah, there's just collagen lining
Speaker 1: layers and layers of your blood vessel. So when that
Speaker 1: collagen becomes weak, then it just starts to burst and break.
Speaker 2: Leaky pipe leaky pipes.
Speaker 1: And then your joints are hurting, your muscles are tired,
Speaker 1: you're bleeding under your skin, and then you might go
Speaker 1: to take a bite of I don't know, that stale
Speaker 1: bread or something that you've been eating for some reason,
Speaker 1: and your tooth might fall out because your teeth are
Speaker 1: held into your gums, and your gums are full of collagen,
Speaker 1: and your gums collagen is broken down, so they're bleeding.
Speaker 1: Your gums are bleeding absolutely everywhere.
Speaker 2: It's horrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bleeding gums is one of the sort of hallmark
Speaker 1: signs of scurvy. So it's not really a great way
Speaker 1: to go.
Speaker 2: Are any of the diseases we've talked about a great
Speaker 2: way to go? Would you say no, really, okay, just checking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's pretty much what servy is. That's
Speaker 1: pretty much how it happens. You can't make collagen, all
Speaker 1: of the collagen in your body starts to break down
Speaker 1: and you bleed out. You can really fun times if
Speaker 1: you start to bleed into the sheaths that surround your nerves.
Speaker 1: So your nerves are they're all they travel and your
Speaker 1: body sort of bundled together. A nerve is a bundle
Speaker 1: of a whole bunch of like individual nerve cells, and
Speaker 1: they're usually surrounded by these sheaths. And if your blood
Speaker 1: vessels start to leak all over the place and leak
Speaker 1: into those sheaths, you can compress the nerves and end
Speaker 1: up with paralysis and also a lot of pain because
Speaker 1: you're compressing these nerve fibers. So that's fun.
Speaker 2: So you die by bleeding out basically.
Speaker 1: That's one of the ways. Yeah, that's one of the
Speaker 1: common ways that you can die is just by bleeding out.
Speaker 1: You Also, it's very common to die from secondary infection
Speaker 1: because vitamin C is also important in your immune system,
Speaker 1: and also collagen is just important in helping like all
Speaker 1: of your cells work properly, and so you can die
Speaker 1: by secondary infection because your body just can't fight anything
Speaker 1: off because it's just trying to keep you alive and
Speaker 1: doing a poor job of it. So yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's scurvy. Do you have a question.
Speaker 2: I do have a question. You mentioned briefly that vitamin
Speaker 2: C is important in your immune system all of these
Speaker 2: and I know for a while there were so many
Speaker 2: studies and products that are related to vitamin C and
Speaker 2: your immune system, the emergency packets or whatever, and if
Speaker 2: you take vitamin C, your cold will be shorter. What
Speaker 2: is what is the actual verdict? What do clinical trials show?
Speaker 1: Great question, excellent question. Here's the thing about vitamin C.
Speaker 1: We know a lot about what happens when you do
Speaker 1: not have enough vitamin C. So if you have less
Speaker 1: than ten milligrams a day, then you will end up
Speaker 1: with symptoms of scurvy and you will probably die if
Speaker 1: you don't get access to vitamin.
Speaker 2: C for a prolonged period of time, not just a.
Speaker 1: Day exactly, yeah, for a daily basis, for like a month,
Speaker 1: couple months, many months. So we know that you need
Speaker 1: at least ten that's like the bare minimum. Beyond that,
Speaker 1: there is no evidence that increase amounts of vitamin C
Speaker 1: are beneficial in any way. Okay, so we know that
Speaker 1: there's a minimum that you need to have in order
Speaker 1: to function normally. There is no evidence that taking things
Speaker 1: like emergency have any effect whatsoever on your immune system.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's been many studies and meta analyzes that
Speaker 1: show there is no additional immune boosting effect whatsoever. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not going to help you kick that cold faster,
Speaker 1: et cetera. There is evidence that having like relatively low
Speaker 1: levels of vitamin C, so maybe you're above that scurvy level,
Speaker 1: but you're still kind of low level, it can put
Speaker 1: you at higher risk for diseases like coronary artery disease.
Speaker 1: So it could be beneficial to have like a little
Speaker 1: more than absolutely nothing, right, But beyond that, there's no
Speaker 1: evidence that having more than say like one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty or two hundred, which is like the equivalent of
Speaker 1: eating a bell pepper a day, it's not any better.
Speaker 1: You don't there's no impact on your overall mortality.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's not even a standard number for like the
Speaker 1: recommended daily value. It totally depends on the country, So
Speaker 1: every country has their own version of the recommended daily amount.
Speaker 1: Of vitamin C and it varies. Okay, okay, but yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's the best news about scurvy is that it's
Speaker 1: totally preventable. And even if you end up with pretty
Speaker 1: severe symptoms like gums are bleeding, maybe your bones are
Speaker 1: starting to go, you're bleeding into all your joints, all
Speaker 1: of that is reversible if you give the person vitamin C.
Speaker 1: So even pretty severe symptoms are totally reversible. So it's
Speaker 1: a very preventable and very treatable disease.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so talk to me about how we figured out
Speaker 1: that scurvy was a thing and how we got to
Speaker 1: be where we are today.
Speaker 2: When I suggested that we add scurvy to our list
Speaker 2: of episodes, I didn't really know what I expected to find.
Speaker 2: The word scurvy reminded me of pirates and sailors and
Speaker 2: oranges and how my mom used to tell me that
Speaker 2: I was going to get scurvy because of how much
Speaker 2: candy I ate, and I would only eat broccoli with
Speaker 2: cheese poured over it.
Speaker 1: Okay, two things, Deb's nurse too, I know. But also,
Speaker 1: broccoli is full of vitamin C, one of the highest vegetables,
Speaker 1: and two a lot of gummy candies have ascorbic acid
Speaker 1: in them.
Speaker 2: What's up, mom? Okay, I should warn you right now though,
Speaker 2: because I mentioned the word pirates doesn't mean that I
Speaker 2: talk a lot about pirates, because I talk about sailors,
Speaker 2: and in that I include pirates, So they're just kind
Speaker 2: of lumped in with all those other ones.
Speaker 1: That's fine.
Speaker 2: Also, pirates didn't really keep the best records as far
Speaker 2: as I know.
Speaker 1: I'm shocked. So they just have maps, right with dots
Speaker 1: and xes. That's all they did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, X marks the spot, Yeah, where you'll get scurvy. Okay,
Speaker 2: But when I started my research, right off the bat,
Speaker 2: I read a line that gave me an idea of
Speaker 2: just how rich and important scurvy's role in history was.
Speaker 2: Are you ready? Yeah, quote, If we exclude straightforward famine,
Speaker 2: scurvy is probably the nutritional deficiency disease that has caused
Speaker 2: the most suffering in recorded history. WHOA, Yeah, that was
Speaker 2: a little surprising to me. I mean, I knew scurvy
Speaker 2: must have been important, but I didn't have any idea
Speaker 2: of the scope and the scale of the history of
Speaker 2: this disease. So let me tell you tell me. Let's
Speaker 2: start at the beginning. Scurvy is mentioned in several early texts,
Speaker 2: starting as early as fifteen hundred BCE in ancient Egypt. Yes,
Speaker 2: we're finally back in Egypt in the Ebers Ebers papyrus.
Speaker 2: I don't know how you pronounce it. It's a medical papyrus.
Speaker 2: It has also been found in writings from ancient India, Greece, Rome, China,
Speaker 2: et cetera, dating back thousands of years. For the most part,
Speaker 2: these ancient texts focus on the clinical description of scurvy
Speaker 2: and recommendations for treatment, rather than identifying risk factors or
Speaker 2: any sort of pattern in disease incidents. Interesting, but it's
Speaker 2: pretty much a certainty that the disease existed during this
Speaker 2: time due to seasonal scarcity, crop failure, or during times
Speaker 2: of crisis like prolonged sieges during warfare. Interesting that there
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to be a consistent history of the burden
Speaker 2: of scurvy throughout these early years. There could be several
Speaker 2: reasons for this. For instance, if you were in the
Speaker 2: middle of a prolonged siege with little food, you probably
Speaker 2: had multiple nutritional deficiencies, and so scurvy could have had
Speaker 2: different appearances depending on the exact conditions of your setting.
Speaker 2: But what I find really interesting about scurvy in these
Speaker 2: texts is not the apparent gap in its history, but
Speaker 2: that effective treatment for the disease was discovered, lost, rediscovered, debunked, rediscovered, ignored, rediscovered,
Speaker 2: et cetera.
Speaker 1: Oh, my god, for thousands.
Speaker 2: Of years, actually thousands of years. That ancient Egyptian papyrus
Speaker 2: that I mentioned earlier, it recommends a diet of fresh
Speaker 2: fruit and vegetables to cure the condition. Whoa in fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred PCE, thirty five hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And yet despite this knowledge, millions of life would be
Speaker 2: lost due to scurvy in those thirty five hundred years.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 1: That is really crazy.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you why. I don't worry.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, it's just because, like nobody paid
Speaker 1: attention like that, so much of ancient Egypt was lost
Speaker 1: for so long.
Speaker 2: It was. But it's more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: Oh good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. From around the fourth century AD or so, scurvy
Speaker 2: rarely shows its face and writings for about a thousand years.
Speaker 2: In the fourteen hundred, scurvy suddenly picks up steam and
Speaker 2: is everywhere. Can you guess why that might be.
Speaker 1: Travel? Yeah, I thought I was going to get it wrong.
Speaker 2: Because people started sailing really long distances, which meant potentially
Speaker 2: long periods of time without any fresh fruit or vegetables.
Speaker 2: As a result, descriptions of scurvy during this time and
Speaker 2: the next few hundred years focus on it as being
Speaker 2: a disease of sailors, including pirates, which would of course
Speaker 2: complicate things when trying to identify the cause of the disease. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I'll get to that. The more that a culture
Speaker 2: or country was involved in oversea trade, exploration, or colonization
Speaker 2: of distant lands like Portugal looking at you, the more
Speaker 2: we see scurvy descriptions. And obviously there were many names
Speaker 2: for the disease. In Portugal, it was known as the
Speaker 2: curse of the mouth, for.
Speaker 1: Instance, bleeding those gums.
Speaker 2: We know that scurvy started appearing more and more in
Speaker 2: the fourteen hundred, fourteen and fifteen hundreds because people were
Speaker 2: sailing longer and longer distances. But why did people start
Speaker 2: doing this? Oh, why did they start sailing longer and
Speaker 2: longer distances? Then the simple answer is that shipbuilding technology
Speaker 2: had been greatly advanced by Portuguese sailors during that time,
Speaker 2: and better ships combined with better navigation like improved compasses,
Speaker 2: meant that you could point in a specific direction and
Speaker 2: actually go there, rather than just crossing your fingers and
Speaker 2: hoping for the best. But why this surge and navigational technology.
Speaker 2: There's a point to this rabbit hole. Let's take a
Speaker 2: quick look at what happened between the years thirteen fifty
Speaker 2: and fifteen hundred. If you remember from the Plague episode,
Speaker 2: the Black Death took place from around thirteen forty seven
Speaker 2: to thirteen fifty two, during which time it wiped out
Speaker 2: a third to a half of the entire population of Europe.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned during that episode, the consequences of such
Speaker 2: enormous population loss were incredibly far reaching. Oh Before the plague,
Speaker 2: most books were in Latin, making them largely inaccessible to
Speaker 2: the majority of the population, But after the plague many
Speaker 2: were translated into the vernacular, making education much more widely acceptable. Also,
Speaker 2: the economy boomed because so many people suddenly had more
Speaker 2: disposable income than they knew what to do with the
Speaker 2: result of multiple inheritances from so many of their relatives dying.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, the overland silk road connecting to Africa, Asia,
Speaker 2: or connecting Africa, Asia and Europe was dangerous, not fast
Speaker 2: enough to keep up with demand, and there were too
Speaker 2: many middlemen to pay for your goods to be delivered.
Speaker 2: This created a demand for an alternate route between Asia
Speaker 2: and Europe, which led people to the sea to venture
Speaker 2: on these long voyages with no end in sight. During
Speaker 2: these long months at sea, sailors primarily survived on preserved rations,
Speaker 2: stopping occasionally to restock their stores, but the lack of
Speaker 2: fresh vegetables and fruit led the way to a huge
Speaker 2: increase in scurvy. Portugal led the world in these long voyages,
Speaker 2: and so it's in the journals and ship logs of
Speaker 2: those sailors that we see scurvy debilitate and destroy a
Speaker 2: ship's crew, as it would for the next four hundred years.
Speaker 2: Who from the Black Death to economic boom and technological
Speaker 2: development to exploration to scurvy. Everything is connected. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: isn't that thrilling?
Speaker 1: That is awesome?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a it's a really oversimplification of things,
Speaker 2: many factors still, but that's why I love the historical context.
Speaker 2: Everything is stink and connected.
Speaker 1: I love this so much. And I feel like I
Speaker 1: really wish that when I had taken history for most
Speaker 1: my entire life up to this point, that any teacher
Speaker 1: I had ever did things like this, Like it's.
Speaker 2: Just so, I mean, it's so it's so silly to
Speaker 2: study things in isolation. Yeah, I agree, Even scurvy, even
Speaker 2: the Black Death, all of these things, everything is connected
Speaker 2: to shipbuilding technology. Who knew that had a link to
Speaker 2: the Black Death or scurvy or yeah, inheritance, and like.
Speaker 1: Of course it does, because everything is connected. But like
Speaker 1: to see those connections is awesome. Yeah, oh that is
Speaker 1: so cool.
Speaker 2: Back to scurvy. Scurvy is beginning to be mentioned more
Speaker 2: and more as a problem on these oceanic voyages. But
Speaker 2: exactly how big of a problem was it. Let's see
Speaker 2: this by the numbers. Vasco to Gama was a famous
Speaker 2: Portuguese navigator who side note died of malaria. Ooh, and
Speaker 2: was also a really big a hole. Just check out
Speaker 2: his Wikipedia page if you're bored. Sometime during his circumnavigation
Speaker 2: of Africa, Degama lost thirty men out of a crew
Speaker 2: of one hundred and forty to scurvy. Es time, it's
Speaker 2: very and be a little higher, actually okay, and only
Speaker 2: a handful could operate the ships during times when everyone
Speaker 2: like seven or eight could operate the ships out of
Speaker 2: his whole crew because that everyone else was sick with scurvy.
Speaker 1: So even those who didn't die pretty much everyone had
Speaker 1: everyone okay.
Speaker 2: The numbers would have been a lot higher if they
Speaker 2: hadn't stopped for some oranges in Mombasa. Another name that
Speaker 2: you may have heard of is Ferdinand Magellan.
Speaker 1: Yes, are you jelling? I'm jellin like Magellan. Look at
Speaker 1: him yelling. He's so not jelling. I'm jellying. I'm yelling anyways.
Speaker 2: So Michellan, also a famous Portuguese explorer, is probably most
Speaker 2: famous for his attempt to circumnavigate the globe. His ships
Speaker 2: made it, he didn't ui He was killed in the
Speaker 2: conflict in the Philippines, but along the way, seventy six
Speaker 2: men out of the two hundred and thirty seven that
Speaker 2: started the journey died of scurvy. In an English expedition
Speaker 2: in seventeen forty to capture a Spanish treasure ship.
Speaker 1: Pirates, I'm sorry, I'll stop.
Speaker 2: Maybe there were fireates, I don't know. Eight hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty five men out of one thousand sailors.
Speaker 1: Oh died of scurvy.
Speaker 2: Died of scurvy eight hundred.
Speaker 1: And fifty five out out of one thousand. That's eighty
Speaker 1: five point five percent.
Speaker 2: It's very high.
Speaker 1: Holy cow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. An English sea captain named Sir Peter Hawkins in
Speaker 2: fifteen ninety said that during the twenty years he worked
Speaker 2: at sea, he could count at least ten thousand sailors
Speaker 2: that had died from scurvy during the Age of Exploration,
Speaker 2: So between fifteen hundred and eighteen hundred roughly and estimated
Speaker 2: two million sailors died of the disease.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's big. I had no idea. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Side note hashtag. Not all sailors. Not everyone who went
Speaker 2: on these voyages died of scurvy. Captain Cook, for instance,
Speaker 2: constantly restocked his ships with fresh fruit and vegetables wherever
Speaker 2: they stopped, and I think he had just like one
Speaker 2: case of scurvy.
Speaker 1: Wow. Screw wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And just because you were on land during this
Speaker 2: time didn't mean you were safe from scurvy. In fact,
Speaker 2: around the same time that people started sailing these long distances,
Speaker 2: they started to settle in unfamiliar, far off lands. Where
Speaker 2: they didn't really know how to survive. For instance, in
Speaker 2: the first year of the English settlement of Jamestown in Virginia,
Speaker 2: many people died of scurvy, along with many other illnesses
Speaker 2: and just straight up starvation. Of the five hundred that
Speaker 2: arrived in August of sixteen oh nine, only sixty were
Speaker 2: left alive in May sixteen ten, oh so less than
Speaker 2: a year later. Holy cow, Yeah, Jamestown was almost like
Speaker 2: almost failed completely.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Several French expeditions to the Great White North of Canada
Speaker 2: were also debilitated by scurvy when they stayed too long
Speaker 2: and had to overwinter in Quebec and around there.
Speaker 1: Is that where our first hand account came from.
Speaker 2: No, our first hand account came from the California Gold Rush.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: If you're interested in this, you can read all about
Speaker 2: these expeditions and so so so many more that we
Speaker 2: just don't have time for in Kenneth Carpenter's The History
Speaker 2: of Scurvy in Vitamin C. Clearly, scurvy had become a
Speaker 2: pretty big problem in a short amount of time, and
Speaker 2: its impact was only continuing to grow, especially as commercial
Speaker 2: shipping increased throughout the sixteen and seventeen hundreds. With so
Speaker 2: many lives aka wealth at stake, finding a cure or
Speaker 2: preventative for scurvy was a pretty pressing matter, and you
Speaker 2: would think, based on the fact that valid remedies had
Speaker 2: been written about thousands of years before, and that many
Speaker 2: people on these voyages reported getting instantly better after landing
Speaker 2: somewhere and eating fruits and vegetables for the first time
Speaker 2: in ten weeks, that the issue of prevention or treatment
Speaker 2: would be more about the logistics of keeping these fresh
Speaker 2: fruits on board, rather than actually identifying what it was
Speaker 2: that would stop a scurvy outbreak.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm guessing it's not from your tone.
Speaker 2: But no, there was still no consensus amongst physicians and
Speaker 2: ship captains on what was the best anti scorbutic. But
Speaker 2: before we dismiss them as being stupid or unabsortant, whatever,
Speaker 2: let's consider how these scurvy patterns would have appeared. Okay, first,
Speaker 2: cause you're a ship captain. You notice that after weeks
Speaker 2: and weeks at sea, your crew has bleeding and swollen
Speaker 2: gums and their legs are full of sores. Yeah, you think, well,
Speaker 2: it's probably because they're lazy. They're not moving around and
Speaker 2: Plus there's that stagnant, damp, dank air in the ship's belly. Okay,
Speaker 2: probably not helping things, Okay, probably true. Plus, if your
Speaker 2: diet is extremely limited for a long period of time,
Speaker 2: you're probably suffering from a number of different nutritional deficiencies
Speaker 2: in addition to scurvy, which makes these disease symptoms inconsistent. Okay,
Speaker 2: from case to case and from ship to ship and
Speaker 2: journey to journey, I'll buy that. Okay. Now, treatment you
Speaker 2: get to land and begin to chow down on the
Speaker 2: food that's newly available because you're really tired of the
Speaker 2: same salted meat and porridge or whatever, suddenly everyone starts
Speaker 2: to rapidly improve. Scurvy's gone. Might be the air on
Speaker 2: land is different. You think back to what your captain
Speaker 2: pal has said about the restorative powers of and you're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: that could be it. Better take them back with us
Speaker 2: before we set off again, And you do. You tell
Speaker 2: your crew to eat one lemon a day until you
Speaker 2: run out. But you do run out, and scurvy doesn't
Speaker 2: immediately reappear. In fact, it takes weeks before it starts
Speaker 2: to creep back. Okay, So maybe it's not the citrus
Speaker 2: necessarily that prevents scurvy, but you're not completely willing to
Speaker 2: give it up. So the next time you set off
Speaker 2: on an expedition, you try to find a way to
Speaker 2: bring citrus fruit with you. Storing crates of fresh fruit
Speaker 2: on board isn't a realistic solution, since they would all
Speaker 2: spoil before you got to your destination. Yeah, so maybe
Speaker 2: you make a drink out of it to store it.
Speaker 2: But you have to preserve it in some way, like
Speaker 2: maybe you boil it. So the next time you go
Speaker 2: you bring barrels of boiled lemon drink, which, little do
Speaker 2: you know, is actually useless against scurvy because the boiling
Speaker 2: actually inactivates the vitamin C.
Speaker 1: Yeah it does, guys, it does.
Speaker 2: When your crew gets sick from scurvy even while drinking
Speaker 2: the lemon juice, you're like, well, okay, I guess it's
Speaker 2: not citrus. And the links between what caused scurvy, what
Speaker 2: prevented it, and what treated it, they just weren't very straightforward,
Speaker 2: all right. Throw into that the fact that scurvy was
Speaker 2: also successfully treated by certain plants and the consumption of
Speaker 2: fresh meat, and you can see why it remains such
Speaker 2: a mystery and problem for so long, even with all
Speaker 2: this knowledge.
Speaker 1: It's interesting though that in Egypt their remedy was just
Speaker 1: a blanket fresh fruits and vegetables, which is more broad, right,
Speaker 1: We're not trying to get so specific, like you need
Speaker 1: to have a citrus fruit. It's interesting, but I buy it.
Speaker 1: I guess they're just like, it's hard.
Speaker 2: It's interesting, and it's I mean, I do think, I
Speaker 2: do think that we have a tendency to look back
Speaker 2: negatively on the observational powers for sure people and I
Speaker 2: think that's not fair necessarily considering the context which they live.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, and I really I think the way that
Speaker 1: you put it in context is really it makes it
Speaker 1: a lot more clear.
Speaker 2: So thank you, of course, but people had to do something.
Speaker 2: Money and goods, I mean, lives are being lost in walks.
Speaker 2: James Lynde, an officer in the British Royal Navy who
Speaker 2: in the seventeen hundreds decides to run a clinical trial
Speaker 2: for scurvy curatives. Oh my gosh, wow, very exciting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that it would pass a medical ethics
Speaker 2: review board today. That's not really the issue. They usually
Speaker 2: wouldn't know one group of men with scurvy would be
Speaker 2: given oranges and lemons, another apple cider, and a third
Speaker 2: nothing okay, And there were other treatments in there as well.
Speaker 2: As you might predict, the ones who ate the oranges
Speaker 2: and lemons recovered the fastest, followed by the apple cider group,
Speaker 2: and the third group just didn't get better.
Speaker 1: Did they even actually give them oranges or did they
Speaker 1: let them die?
Speaker 2: No? I don't know. This was a pretty resounding answer though,
Speaker 2: to how to prevent scurvy eat citris.
Speaker 1: YEA.
Speaker 2: Lynde wrote up his results and thoughts, which were widely read,
Speaker 2: but it would take about forty years for his advice
Speaker 2: to be heated. In the late seventeen hundreds, the practice
Speaker 2: of providing lime or lemon juice to British sailors began,
Speaker 2: hence the nickname lamey. Also, the words for lemon and
Speaker 2: lime were interchangeable, both in English and many other languages.
Speaker 2: As we have leman, we have learned.
Speaker 1: I have a question, Yeah, you keep saying that they
Speaker 1: would eat lemons. Would they just like chowed out on?
Speaker 1: Were lemons different back then? Because I cannot imagine just
Speaker 1: chowing down on a lemon.
Speaker 2: Mostly it would be like lemon juice is that they
Speaker 2: would do.
Speaker 1: So they would maybe add sugar or Okay, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was just picturing them like here son true on this lemon,
Speaker 1: and I was like, wow, people were bowled back then.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, So even though sailors were being given
Speaker 2: lemon and lime juice, this didn't really mean that Scurby
Speaker 2: disappeared at all. Throughout the eighteen hundreds. It still popped
Speaker 2: up on some of the ships that were giving their
Speaker 2: crew lemon juice, mostly because during the preparation the vitamin
Speaker 2: sea was inactivated in some way. But it also started
Speaker 2: appearing more and more on land in prisons, for instance,
Speaker 2: where certain prisoners were denied potatoes and onions. I don't
Speaker 2: know why. In California, gold rush country, like our first
Speaker 2: hand account, so if you wanted to try your hand
Speaker 2: at gold prospecting, you had to either travel by land
Speaker 2: in a wagon across the entire US. You could travel
Speaker 2: by sea from a port like Boston all the way
Speaker 2: around the tip of South America and back up. Or
Speaker 2: you could take a boat down to Panama and walk
Speaker 2: across the narrowest part of the country so there was
Speaker 2: no canal yet, and then you would take a boat
Speaker 2: on the inside of Panama up to northern California.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: But basically the journey was very long and scurvy was
Speaker 2: almost inevitable, and if you didn't come down with scurvy
Speaker 2: on your way to California, you were sure to get
Speaker 2: it once you were there. Oh God, That part of
Speaker 2: California was fairly remote at that time with few farms,
Speaker 2: so gold miners mostly ate flapjacks and molasses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, forty nine or flapjacks. That's the thing, m h.
Speaker 2: If you wanted to eat onions or potatoes, get ready
Speaker 2: to fork over all of the gold that you found.
Speaker 1: That's so man capitalism right starts way back when.
Speaker 2: Scurvy was also really common in many Arctic and Antarctic
Speaker 2: expeditions unless they found enough seals or penguins to eat,
Speaker 2: as long as they ate the meat mostly raw. Unlike humans,
Speaker 2: not all animals as we meant, and have to acquire
Speaker 2: their vitamin C through diet, and so if you ate
Speaker 2: the flesh of these animals that produce their vitamin sea
Speaker 2: like many people who actually who are native to those
Speaker 2: parts of the world, they would just eat raw or
Speaker 2: barely barely cooked meat and beautiful Planish vitamin CEA.
Speaker 1: See your on that penguin breast. Yeah, that's all you need.
Speaker 2: It's very cool.
Speaker 1: I like that a lot.
Speaker 2: Also, during the Great Famine in Ireland in the eighteen forties,
Speaker 2: scurvy appeared alongside starvation since the potato crop, which had failed,
Speaker 2: was the usual source of vitamin C for those populations.
Speaker 2: In the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, scurvy
Speaker 2: starts appearing unexpectedly in a strange population babies born to
Speaker 2: wealthy families.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, I know exactly where this.
Speaker 2: Is going from. Yep. Basically, these mothers weren't choosing to
Speaker 2: breast feed, and instead they gave their children formula which
Speaker 2: they could afford to buy, mixed in with milk which
Speaker 2: had been pasteurized and it's vitamin C inactivated.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In the past, these mothers would have given their infant
Speaker 2: to a wet nurse, so they kid would have gotten
Speaker 2: vitamin C that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you your breast milk is full of vitamin
Speaker 1: C as long as the mother has adequate vitamin C.
Speaker 2: Yeah, intake. Amidst all these outbreaks of land scurvy was
Speaker 2: a renewed interest in finding out what the cause of
Speaker 2: the disease really was, and people had some nifty new ideas.
Speaker 2: In most of the episodes of this podcast, this is
Speaker 2: when germ theory pops up as a shining beacon to
Speaker 2: light the way for vaccines and antibiotics. But not so
Speaker 2: for scurvy. No, not so no, because scurvy isn't an
Speaker 2: infectious disease. Yeah, but that's not what a handful of
Speaker 2: people thought in the mid eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Ooh fun.
Speaker 2: So when germ theory began to catch on pause for laughter, Sorry,
Speaker 2: it was trendy to call every disease contagious. I love this,
Speaker 2: isn't it amazing? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But it also I do feel like, to their credit,
Speaker 1: scurvy has a lot of symptoms that I would totally
Speaker 1: believe seem infectious. Right, you're bleeding from your gums, You've
Speaker 1: got these sores and sores everywhere like that. It totally
Speaker 1: looks infect and you can often get secondary infections on
Speaker 1: top of it. So well.
Speaker 2: And also it doesn't usually happen to just one person.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's true. Yeah, it's like groups of people. Yeah.
Speaker 2: For instance, the guy who showed that tuberculosis was contagious,
Speaker 2: his name is Jean antoine v. I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: know how you say his name said quote. Scurvy is
Speaker 2: a contagious miasm comparable to typhus, which occurs in epidemic
Speaker 2: form when people are closely congregated in large groups. It
Speaker 2: is ridiculous to suppose that a lack of fresh vegetables
Speaker 2: is the cause of the disease. And we're laughing at you.
Speaker 2: Sorry from.
Speaker 1: Later, No, I mean, yes, we're laughing at you. But
Speaker 1: also it's an acute way.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: Another person suggested that lime juice was effective because it
Speaker 2: acted as an antibacterial mouth wash. Oh.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: These opinions were in the minority, but it just speaks
Speaker 2: to the fact that there was still active debate on
Speaker 2: the cause and thus the treatment of scurvy. Viewing a
Speaker 2: disease as a deficiency rather than as a positive state
Speaker 2: was a really difficult thing for people to conceptualize, especially
Speaker 2: when everyone was looking for the thing, pathogen, toxin, whatever
Speaker 2: that actively caused a disease. It was way past time
Speaker 2: for some real experiments to begin. Fortunately, in the nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: experimental studies of scurvy became popular and more importantly possible,
Speaker 2: thanks to a very lucky choice of animal model.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I was just gonna say, how could
Speaker 1: they have done? Did they just happen to choose guinea pigs? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Are you serious? Okay, Okay, So there's a reason behind that.
Speaker 1: This is I am amazed right now. Yeah, because of
Speaker 1: all the animals, a freaking guinea pig you choose? Yep.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: I don't remember if we've talked about what animal models
Speaker 2: are before in this podcast.
Speaker 1: I don't know that we've kind of mentioned them, but
Speaker 1: we haven't explained them necessarily.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean basically, in medical research, if you're
Speaker 2: trying to learn more about a human disease or a
Speaker 2: treatment for a disease, you can't really do a lot
Speaker 2: of experimental research on humans directly, so it's really important
Speaker 2: to have an animal in which the disease acts similar
Speaker 2: to the way it does in humans.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, the issue of an appropriate animal model for scurvy
Speaker 2: had come up before, because, as I mentioned, some animals
Speaker 2: can synthesize their own vitamin C. So rats had been
Speaker 2: a popular lab animal at this time. Lab rats and
Speaker 2: pigeons actually, hm, but lab rats were viewed as like
Speaker 2: infection carrying and gross, like the tide had turned against
Speaker 2: rats around this time and they were really gross. But
Speaker 2: guinea pigs have started to be imported as pets for
Speaker 2: children and as little just cute things, and so possibly
Speaker 2: lab animals.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Says some guy named Axel Holst, somewhat randomly chose a
Speaker 2: guinea pig as a model for scurvy and it just
Speaker 2: happened to work.
Speaker 1: The amount of coincidence in science and scientific discoveries is phenomenal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So now the experiments could begin and they would
Speaker 2: show that scurvy was directly related to diet, and that
Speaker 2: fresh fruits, vegetables, raw milk, some kinds of meat prevented scurvy.
Speaker 2: There are so many important names that contributed to this research,
Speaker 2: but I want to quickly shout out doctor Harriet Chick,
Speaker 2: whose lab in London consisted almost exclusively ill women because
Speaker 2: all the men were at army labs during World War One.
Speaker 2: I love, and her research showed that the amount of
Speaker 2: raw milk fed to a guinea pig determined whether or
Speaker 2: not the animal would get scurvy.
Speaker 1: Wow, Harry, Harriet.
Speaker 2: So they knew what scurvy, So they knew that scurvy
Speaker 2: was related to diet. But what was the unifying thing
Speaker 2: in all of these anti screabutic foods Vitamin C, which
Speaker 2: at that point was still unknown. Yeah, it was just
Speaker 2: called vitamin C because vitamin A and B had already
Speaker 2: been found as nutritional factors which that were necessary for
Speaker 2: the growth of rats.
Speaker 1: Wait, so they just found these compounds and they just
Speaker 1: were like, Okay, we'll call this one vitamin A, and
Speaker 1: we'll call this one vitamin B. And so with this
Speaker 1: when they were trying to figure out scurvy, they were
Speaker 1: just like, well, we know it's something different, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna call it vitamin C H. But we have no
Speaker 1: idea what it is.
Speaker 2: I was just a numbering system, a naming system.
Speaker 1: For things they don't know. Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2: I think A and B might have been known. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, C was not. That is so hilarious.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In nineteen thirty, a Hungarian chemist named Albert sent
Speaker 2: Gayorgi isolated a compound which was later named ascorbic acid,
Speaker 2: also anti scorbutic ascorbic. Oh, you just blew my brain down,
Speaker 2: what's up? And so that was discovered to be the
Speaker 2: vitamin C. That so many people had been looking for,
Speaker 2: which would get him a Nobel Prize actually for that effort.
Speaker 2: So now that the compound was isolated and described, a
Speaker 2: pharmaceutical company immediately took out patents to commercially produce the vitamin,
Speaker 2: of course, and make a fortune no one. But eventually
Speaker 2: access to vitamin C became very cheap and easy. And
Speaker 2: it's also in a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did people figure that out pretty quickly? They were like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is in tons of everything, that right?
Speaker 2: But oh yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, No, it was mostly
Speaker 2: it was testing these these foods, okay, such for that
Speaker 2: they were all found relatively quickly, okay throughout Once once
Speaker 2: vitamin C was discovered, though, cases of scurvy really dropped off,
Speaker 2: and there were a few cases here and there with
Speaker 2: a fad diet where you just drank green tea for
Speaker 2: that's it and honey or something seen fen fen baby.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. But I'm guessing that scurvy didn't completely disappear. So, Aaron,
Speaker 2: tell me where do we stand with scurvy today?
Speaker 1: I'd love to There basically are no solid numbers on
Speaker 1: how many cases of scurvy exist in the world in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen or twenty seventeen or twenty sixteen, or the
Speaker 1: two thousands for that matter.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's eradicated.
Speaker 1: It's definitely not eradicated. I've really, I feel like I've
Speaker 1: said this on a few episodes already this season. I
Speaker 1: really tried hard to find numbers on this and I couldn't.
Speaker 2: Everyone. If you're playing a drinking game that's related to
Speaker 2: the podcasts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, anyways, CDC, who FDA, They all failed me.
Speaker 1: Nobody has numbers.
Speaker 2: Fighting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm ready to fight with someone about this. And
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that it's in large part because
Speaker 1: because this is a disease that is so easily treatable
Speaker 1: and preventable, it's not reportable in any real way. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not something that people are necessarily keeping tabs on
Speaker 1: at national or international levels. That doesn't mean that it's gone.
Speaker 1: When you search for epidemiological information on the status of Scroovy,
Speaker 1: what you find are tons, like dozens and dozens of
Speaker 1: case reports. Case reports are when physicians, after they see
Speaker 1: a case of something that they don't see very often,
Speaker 1: they write it up. But I found lots of these,
Speaker 1: lots of them all over the US, all over Australia, Europe.
Speaker 1: This is happening, not just in places that we in
Speaker 1: the US might think sound far away. This even happens
Speaker 1: in the United States, even as recently as the last
Speaker 1: few years. This year, I'm sure there's been cases of scurvy.
Speaker 1: But the real question that remains about scurvy isn't even
Speaker 1: necessarily how many cases there are, but why these cases
Speaker 1: are happening. Because we know exactly what the cause is,
Speaker 1: we know exactly how to prevent and treat it, and
Speaker 1: it's very easy. You don't even need any drugs. You
Speaker 1: just need a bell pepper or a potato, or an
Speaker 1: orange or a piece of broccoli, right right, that's all
Speaker 1: it takes.
Speaker 2: What is standing in the way of people getting heavy
Speaker 2: access to that kind of food or supplement in another
Speaker 2: way exactly.
Speaker 1: And so that's really what it comes down to is,
Speaker 1: for the most part, the people who end up getting
Speaker 1: scurvy have a lack of access. So scurvy tends to
Speaker 1: still happen today in modern times in populations like refugee
Speaker 1: populations that might not have access to any fresh fruits
Speaker 1: or vegetables and have a very limited diet. In terms
Speaker 1: of what they can access and what they're able to eat,
Speaker 1: because they might be getting food in like bags from
Speaker 1: organizations that send them to them right or things like that,
Speaker 1: or they might just have severe malnutrition to begin with.
Speaker 1: And so scurvy is a very very common, Like you
Speaker 1: kind of mentioned, it's a very very common syndrome that
Speaker 1: comes along with generalized malnutrition. And part of that is
Speaker 1: because since vitamin C, you can't store it in your
Speaker 1: body for very long. It's not one of the first
Speaker 1: things necessarily that you'll end up like dyeing from, but
Speaker 1: it is something that relatively early on, like within a
Speaker 1: month or two of having not enough food, you can
Speaker 1: end up with scurvy or symptoms of scurvy. The other
Speaker 1: populations that it can happen to are lower income populations
Speaker 1: that can't afford fresh fruits and vegetables, because the thing
Speaker 1: about vitamin C is that it breaks down relatively easily,
Speaker 1: So even if you're eating foods that in theory have
Speaker 1: vegetables in them, if they are all canned foods or
Speaker 1: they're all microwaved to oblivion, then you're not actually getting
Speaker 1: any of the vitamin SEA that might be in those foods.
Speaker 1: So even though you're eating a can of chicken tortilla
Speaker 1: soup that has bell peppers in it, you're not getting
Speaker 1: any of that vitamin C from those bell peppers. And
Speaker 1: that's an actual real case that I found in Houston
Speaker 1: of a woman who was eating only chicken tortilla soup
Speaker 1: to try and lose weight, and she you ended up
Speaker 1: with scurvy diagnosed in Houston a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: Trying to wait.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, And so so there's kind of
Speaker 1: we've already hit on two populations, just one kind of soup,
Speaker 1: one soup.
Speaker 2: Did chicken see why she chose that particular soup? What brand?
Speaker 1: And I quote chicken tortilla soup. I'm sorry, that's all
Speaker 1: I got for you anyways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, eat your vegetables.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's sort of the that's the long
Speaker 1: and short of it. Yeah, So it can happen in
Speaker 1: in low income populations, It can happen in displaced populations.
Speaker 1: It can happen also in populations maybe with mental illnesses
Speaker 1: who aren't eating who maybe who aren't eating at all, who,
Speaker 1: or who aren't eating fresh foods and vegetables. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: only eating toast or they're only drinking something or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there are definitely still populations both in this country,
Speaker 1: in every country. It definitely it is still an issue.
Speaker 1: It still happens. The only numbers that I saw some
Speaker 1: articles claimed that the overall rates of scurvy or of
Speaker 1: vitamin C deficiency rather not of scurvy necessarily could be
Speaker 1: anywhere from two percent or seven percent in countries like
Speaker 1: the US to up to forty five percent in other countries.
Speaker 1: And the other population that it can happen to is children,
Speaker 1: whether because they're very picky eaters or because they also
Speaker 1: don't have access to foods that are fresh.
Speaker 2: I also read something speaking of populations. Bachelor scurvy was
Speaker 2: some a term that was used frequently, and this was
Speaker 2: to refer to old older men who lived alone or
Speaker 2: widower scurvy who lived alone and this was largely in
Speaker 2: like the early nineteen hundreds and just did not eat
Speaker 2: any fresh fruit. They just ate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it definitely is. Older populations are especially at
Speaker 1: risk for sure, because they might not be eating much
Speaker 1: at all. As you age might be like your metabolism
Speaker 1: slows down, you're just not hungry, you're tired, or you
Speaker 1: also if you aren't working, you might not have a
Speaker 1: lot of money, et cetera. So you're eating things that Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's definitely I haven't heard the term bachelor scurvy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it definitely that's a population that would definitely
Speaker 1: be a risk for scurvy. And one thing that I
Speaker 1: found interesting is that clearly scurvy still happens, right, Scurvy
Speaker 1: still happens everywhere. All it takes is just not eating
Speaker 1: fruits and vegetables. So it's not hard to get scurvy
Speaker 1: if you think about someone only eating like toast and
Speaker 1: rice or something like jack and tortia soup. Whatever. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's scurvy in the world today.
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay, very interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had fun doing this.
Speaker 2: I love this. I thought it was a really fun departure.
Speaker 2: I loved seeing germ theory from the other side.
Speaker 1: Yeah we've never seen that. Yeah, how fun.
Speaker 2: And I'm sorry there weren't more pirates.
Speaker 1: You know, I made them enough. I just kept shoving
Speaker 1: the pirates in there.
Speaker 2: I Mean, the thing is is that pirates were just
Speaker 2: a part of all of that. The sailors. If you
Speaker 2: want to read about sailors and pirates, let's talk about sources.
Speaker 1: Let's okay, great transition.
Speaker 2: By the way, So I read a book by Kenneth
Speaker 2: Carpenter which I mentioned earlier, called The History of Scurvy
Speaker 2: in Vitamin C. It is extensively well researched, is great.
Speaker 2: It's a really thorough book. Also a history of scurvy
Speaker 2: and Vitamin C by Howard Sauberlik in the book Vitamin
Speaker 2: C and Health and Disease, The Cambridge World History of
Speaker 2: Human Disease. And then a couple of articles which we'll post.
Speaker 1: Yes, we will post all of the articles that we
Speaker 1: used on our website, This Podcast will Kill You dot com.
Speaker 1: You can find those under our episodes tab each episode.
Speaker 1: We have all of our book lists and our article lists.
Speaker 1: If you are, for some reason especially interested in any
Speaker 1: of the case reports, shoot us an email at this
Speaker 1: Podcast will Kill You at gmail dot com and I'd
Speaker 1: be happy to send you those. You also can find
Speaker 1: us on Twitter at TPWKY and This Podcast Will Kill
Speaker 1: You on Instagram, where we post lots of pictures and
Speaker 1: cool stuff that we find about each episode.
Speaker 2: Thank you too, Bloodmobile for providing the music for this
Speaker 2: episode and all of our episodes.
Speaker 1: We love it.
Speaker 2: And thanks to you for listening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we really like making this podcast and it makes
Speaker 1: us happy that we're not the only ones who listen
Speaker 1: to ourselves talking.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Until next time, wash your hands
Speaker 1: And eat a bell pepperm