Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy fee Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. This episode
Speaker 1: is the last episode I am writing for the year.
Speaker 1: It's been a year. Hooray, Yeah, hooray. Also, I've just
Speaker 1: I've had minimal contact with anybody besides my spouse in
Speaker 1: almost nine months, and for some reason, my brain keeps
Speaker 1: being like scurvy and that connection doesn't make sense really,
Speaker 1: because if I were to get a vitamin deficiency because
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, it would probably be about vitamin D
Speaker 1: from the not going out into the sun. Is that
Speaker 1: what you're saying is that your brain is making a
Speaker 1: weird jump of concern of vitamin deficiency. Maybe not concerned,
Speaker 1: but maybe more like at least they don't have scurvy,
Speaker 1: like huh, But brain, that doesn't make any sense anyway.
Speaker 1: That's what we're going to talk about today, is scurvy
Speaker 1: because just for some weird reason, my brain keeps coming
Speaker 1: back around to it in these times of winter and pandemic.
Speaker 1: So scurvy, in case you don't know, and you probably do,
Speaker 1: is a deficiency in vitamin c or asorbic acid, and
Speaker 1: its story goes way way back in history, all the
Speaker 1: way to our evolutionary ancestors living more than sixty million
Speaker 1: years ago, and with a few exceptions including guinea pigs
Speaker 1: and bats, most mammals can generate their own asorbic acid,
Speaker 1: and that included those primate ancestors. But somewhere along the way,
Speaker 1: a random genetic mutation broke the ability to produce an
Speaker 1: enzyme known as l galuno lactone oxidase or GULO, which
Speaker 1: is a necessary part of making a sorbic acid. A
Speaker 1: sorbic acid is also necessary the body uses it to
Speaker 1: send the size the protein collagen, and collagen is a
Speaker 1: crucially important part of our connective tissue. We needed to
Speaker 1: do really important things like hold our skin and blood
Speaker 1: vessels together. So if the body cannot replace worn out collagen,
Speaker 1: it causes serious problems. The first symptoms of scurvy involve fatigue, lethargy,
Speaker 1: and aching joints. People start to bruise easily, wounds won't heal,
Speaker 1: and old wounds reopen. The gums start to bleed, and
Speaker 1: the teeth start to loosen and can in fact come
Speaker 1: out entirely. This is also accompanied by foul odors, including
Speaker 1: very bad breath. Without treatment with vitamin C, scurvy is
Speaker 1: eventually fatal, often because of acute internal bleeding around the
Speaker 1: brain or heart. But when our ancestors stopped being able
Speaker 1: to produce gulo, this really did not matter. They were
Speaker 1: living in tropical areas and their diets included lots of
Speaker 1: fresh fruits and vegetables, so they were getting ncy of
Speaker 1: vitamin C through their food. If this had not been
Speaker 1: through this genetic mutation that shut off the ability to
Speaker 1: synthesize ghulu would have wiped them out, but since their
Speaker 1: diets were rich with vitamin C, they continued to thrive.
Speaker 1: As people started living farther from tropical areas, they started
Speaker 1: eating more foods that did not necessarily contain as much
Speaker 1: vitamin C, but most of the time this was still
Speaker 1: not a big problem. Most dietary recommendations call for significantly
Speaker 1: more vitamin C, but it doesn't actually take that much
Speaker 1: just to prevent scurvy, only about ten milligrams a day
Speaker 1: or all you need, and although vitamin C is mostly
Speaker 1: associated with fruits and vegetables, it is found in other
Speaker 1: foods as well. Most meat contains a little if it
Speaker 1: hasn't been cooked too long, and liver and kidney meat
Speaker 1: in particular contained quite a bit of it. So, as
Speaker 1: one example, the practice of eating raw organ meat in
Speaker 1: far northern indigenous communities provides protection from scurvy even when
Speaker 1: plant based foods are unavailable or out of season. So
Speaker 1: as communities established themselves around the world, people had to
Speaker 1: have some kind of vitamin C in their diets, otherwise
Speaker 1: that community just could not survive. But anytime that access
Speaker 1: to food was cut off in some way, say because
Speaker 1: of a war or a famine, people could start to
Speaker 1: develop scurvy. And this was also true for people with
Speaker 1: diseases and conditions that kept them from eating or kept
Speaker 1: them from absorbing the nutrients and their food. And the
Speaker 1: word scurvy comes from older terms that mean lazy, scabbed,
Speaker 1: or scurf, which used to be used to describe dandruff.
Speaker 1: People started using it to describe this disease in about
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, but written descriptions of scurvy that predate
Speaker 1: that word are much older. The earliest likely description of
Speaker 1: scurvy is found in the Egyptian document known as the
Speaker 1: Ebers Papyrus, which dates back to about fift b c E.
Speaker 1: Past podcast subject for Shrewda described a condition involving leading
Speaker 1: gums and loosening teeth around eight hundred BC. Roughly four
Speaker 1: hundred years later, Greek physician Hippocrates described what was probably scurvy,
Speaker 1: and while he did not go into detail about the
Speaker 1: cure he knew for it, he did note that it
Speaker 1: wasn't effective and that patients usually died. Traditional Chinese medicine
Speaker 1: texts described collections of symptoms that very much resemble scurvy
Speaker 1: as well. So today scurvy is associated with long sea
Speaker 1: voyages and his humanity took to the sea. People worked
Speaker 1: out some ways to prevent it, although really without necessarily
Speaker 1: knowing that that was what they were doing. Many of
Speaker 1: the earliest seafarers stuck close to the coasts or the
Speaker 1: island hopped, and that gave them plenty of opportunities to
Speaker 1: stock up on fresh food. But his voyages got longer,
Speaker 1: many also had foods on board that were rich in
Speaker 1: vitamin C. It's possible that Polynesian wayfinders introduced sweet potatoes
Speaker 1: to Central and South America. They would have brought them
Speaker 1: with them over thousands of miles of ocean and sweet
Speaker 1: potatoes contained vitamin C. Scandinavians stocked their ships with cloud berries,
Speaker 1: which have about four times as much vitamin C as
Speaker 1: oranges do. Unpasteurized milk also contains vitamin C, so seafarers
Speaker 1: who had dairy animals on board could get it that way.
Speaker 1: While scurvy was common enough to be documented in ancient
Speaker 1: medical literature, one of the first specifically documented outbreaks happened
Speaker 1: in the thirteenth century during the Eighth Crusade, King Louis
Speaker 1: the ninth lay siege to Tunis. Although there were plenty
Speaker 1: of fresh fruits and vegetables available in the area, the
Speaker 1: king and his fighting force were mostly eating fish, and
Speaker 1: many were also undertaking religious fasts. The king and about
Speaker 1: a sixth of his men died of disease during the siege.
Speaker 1: For a long time, their deaths were attributed to plague,
Speaker 1: but more recent research has found evidence of scurvy in
Speaker 1: the king's jawbone. Not long after this, scurvy started to
Speaker 1: become a serious problem on European ships during long sea voyages,
Speaker 1: and most of the literature that's related to scurvy in
Speaker 1: history today is focused primarily on Europe and its colonies,
Speaker 1: mostly during the Age of Exploration, which was from about
Speaker 1: the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. But of course Europeans
Speaker 1: were not the only people taking to the sea at
Speaker 1: this point. It's possible that other nations aren't as represented
Speaker 1: in English language literature because of language barriers or prejudice,
Speaker 1: but it's also possible that scurvy was just not as
Speaker 1: much of a problem outside of European fleets. Most of
Speaker 1: the time, it takes between two months and twelve weeks
Speaker 1: without vitamin C for a person to develop scurvy, and
Speaker 1: while sailors from parts of Africa and Asia were taking
Speaker 1: voyages that lasted much longer than that, overall, often they
Speaker 1: were not going that long between stops to resupply. It
Speaker 1: also seems like they may have been doing a better
Speaker 1: job at providing their crews with foods rich in vitamin C.
Speaker 1: Past podcast subject Ibn Batuta, who was from what's now
Speaker 1: Morocco and traveled extensively during the fourteenth century, described green
Speaker 1: vegetables and ginger being grown in tanks on Chinese vessels.
Speaker 1: He also wrote about salted ginger, pepper, lemons, and mangoes
Speaker 1: being loaded onto ships in preparation for long voyages. Another
Speaker 1: previous podcast subject is Jungha, who led fleets of treasure
Speaker 1: ships from China all the way to Africa in the
Speaker 1: fifteenth century, and we don't have lists of exactly what
Speaker 1: provisions he took, but we do know that his fleets
Speaker 1: included huge supply vessels whose whole purpose was sustaining the
Speaker 1: voyage itself, and that the ships had kitchens that prepared
Speaker 1: meals for crews and passengers. There are also multiple references
Speaker 1: to Tea in relation to his voyages, and t does
Speaker 1: contain some vitamin C. For the most part, written records
Speaker 1: of scurvy on Chinese vessel don't really start until the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, when people left China bound for California during
Speaker 1: the Gold Rush. But European ships were another story. Especially
Speaker 1: as European ships crossed whole oceans. People's diets were often
Speaker 1: restricted to salted meat and hardtack and not much else. Typically,
Speaker 1: any vegetables grown on board were only for the officers. Consequently,
Speaker 1: it's estimated that scurvy killed two million European sailors between
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century and the nineteenth century, which is when
Speaker 1: navies started to more consistently connect scurvy prevention to things
Speaker 1: like citrus juice. During these centuries, scurvy was the leading
Speaker 1: cause of death amongst sailors at sea. It was also
Speaker 1: a major cause of death among enslaved Africans during the
Speaker 1: Transatlantic slave trade, although the details of that aspect have
Speaker 1: not been nearly as specifically documented as with ship's crews.
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about some more specific scurvy
Speaker 1: information after we first paused for a little sponsor break. Today,
Speaker 1: scurvy is treated almost like a punchline in pirate jokes,
Speaker 1: but it was an enormous problem for hundreds of years.
Speaker 1: Scurvy killed a hundred of the original hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: crew during Vasco da Gama's voyage to the Indian subcontinent
Speaker 1: that started in fourte for Nan Magellan left Spain with
Speaker 1: a fleet of five ships in fifteen nineteen, searching for
Speaker 1: a way to reach Asia from Europe by traveling west
Speaker 1: by sea. Only eighteen of his original crew of two
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy made it back to Spain in two
Speaker 1: with scurvy being a major cause of death. Here is
Speaker 1: how one of Magellan's crew described conditions in his journal quote,
Speaker 1: we ain't only old biscuit, reduced to outer and full
Speaker 1: of grubs and stinking from the dirt which the rats
Speaker 1: had made on it when eating the good biscuit, And
Speaker 1: we drank water that was yellow and stinking. The men
Speaker 1: were so hungry that if any of them caught a rat,
Speaker 1: he could sell it for a high price to someone
Speaker 1: who would eat it. In fifteen thirty five, French explorer
Speaker 1: Jacques Cartier established a fort across the St. Charles River
Speaker 1: from the Iroquois village of Staticona that's near what's now
Speaker 1: Quebec City. That winter was extremely harsh. Cardier's ships became
Speaker 1: ice bound. They were not able to return to France's
Speaker 1: planned and when they heard of an illness that was
Speaker 1: spreading through the indigenous population, they tried to cut off
Speaker 1: contact with them, But then that same illness started to
Speaker 1: spread through Cardier's own men. In an account translated by
Speaker 1: Richard Hacklett, it's described as this quote. Some did lose
Speaker 1: their strength and could not stand on their feet. Then
Speaker 1: did their legs swell, their sinews shrink as black as
Speaker 1: any coal. Others also had all their skins spotted with
Speaker 1: spots of blood of a purple color. Then did ascend
Speaker 1: up to their ankles, knees, thighs, shoulders, arms, and neck.
Speaker 1: Their mouth became stinking, their gums so rotten that all
Speaker 1: the flesh did fall off, even to the roots of
Speaker 1: the teeth, which also all fall out. About the middle
Speaker 1: of February, of a hundreds and ten persons that we were,
Speaker 1: there were not ten whole. There were already eight dead,
Speaker 1: and more than fifty six, and as we saw it
Speaker 1: passed all hope of recovery. So at some point Cardier
Speaker 1: went for a walk and encountered Domagaya, who was the
Speaker 1: son of Don Kona, who was the chief of Staticona.
Speaker 1: Domagaya to hold Cardier about a treatment for this disease,
Speaker 1: which was to prepare a tea from the leaves of
Speaker 1: a local tree. This tree is not conclusively identified today,
Speaker 1: but the most likely candidate is the eastern white cedar,
Speaker 1: whose leaves always contained some vitamin cy but have a
Speaker 1: whole lot more of it in the new growth that
Speaker 1: comes out in the early spring. Although at least twenty
Speaker 1: five men in the fort died of scurvy, this cure
Speaker 1: was effective for the ones who survived. There is a course,
Speaker 1: of course, a whole lot more to this story outside
Speaker 1: the part about scurvy, Cartier had actually abducted Domagaya and
Speaker 1: his brother on his earlier voyage and forced them to
Speaker 1: accompany him back to France, bringing them back to North
Speaker 1: America with him in fifteen thirty five, and at the
Speaker 1: end of his second voyage, Cartier abducted them for a
Speaker 1: second time, along with their father and seven other indigenous people.
Speaker 1: All but one of them died before Cardier returned to
Speaker 1: North America for his third voyage. In Probably the most
Speaker 1: dramatic and notorious outbreak of scurvy at sea was during
Speaker 1: George Anson's four year voyage around the world, which started
Speaker 1: in seventeen forty. Britain was at war with Spain, and
Speaker 1: because of the war, Anson had a serious labor shortage.
Speaker 1: Even press gangs, who were abducting men off the street
Speaker 1: to force them to serve in the Royal Navy could
Speaker 1: not provide him with enough men for his fleet. Eventually,
Speaker 1: this gap was filled with men from Chelsea Hospital, most
Speaker 1: of whom were sick, injured, or elderly to the point
Speaker 1: that they weren't able to just leave on their own
Speaker 1: when they got released from the hospital. The people who
Speaker 1: did have the capacity to just walk away did that,
Speaker 1: so he was left with like the oldest, sickest men
Speaker 1: from the hospital. And then there were delays in outfitting
Speaker 1: the ships, and the crews ate nothing but ships rations
Speaker 1: for months as they waited, And while there were treatments
Speaker 1: for scurvy on board, none of them contained much, if any,
Speaker 1: vitamin C, so they did not actually work for the
Speaker 1: most part. They were also really unpleasant, like drinking a
Speaker 1: bunch of straight vinegar. I like vinegar and vinegary things,
Speaker 1: but the idea of just gulping down a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of it does not sound great to me. Hard pass.
Speaker 1: Once they finally got underway, they sailed through terrible storms
Speaker 1: and were blown off course by April of seventeen forty one.
Speaker 1: Most of the men who had survived those treacherous seas
Speaker 1: had then developed scurvy. By June, they were down from
Speaker 1: six ships to only three, with only three hundred thirty
Speaker 1: five survivors out of about thirteen hundred original crew. Finally
Speaker 1: they reached the one Fernandez Islands off the coast of Chile.
Speaker 1: These were home to plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables,
Speaker 1: and as the ships took on fresh provisions and the
Speaker 1: men ate these foods, they gradually began to recover, but
Speaker 1: because their conditions were so dire, when they started getting
Speaker 1: more vitamin C into their bodies, it actually took more
Speaker 1: than a month before men stopped dying of scurvy. Anson's
Speaker 1: dwindling fleet was struck by scurvy again in the Pacific
Speaker 1: Ocean in the summer of seventeen forty two, obviously after
Speaker 1: they had run out of the fresh provisions that they
Speaker 1: brought on board. When his two mating ships finally got
Speaker 1: to China, there were only two hundred and twenty seven
Speaker 1: of the original crew still living. In spite of that,
Speaker 1: they managed to capture a Spanish galleon that was bound
Speaker 1: for Manila on June seventeen forty three, and then with
Speaker 1: the holy a hundred and forty five of the original men,
Speaker 1: they made it back to Britain. Because they had captured
Speaker 1: the Spanish galleon, they were treated as heroes, with treasures
Speaker 1: from the galleon paraded through the streets of London, and
Speaker 1: Anson named First Lord of the Admiralty in seventeen fifty one.
Speaker 1: At this point, I mean it might seem a little
Speaker 1: weird for the person who was in charge when all
Speaker 1: of these people died, so then become the first Lord
Speaker 1: of the Admiralty. But at this point, European naval officials
Speaker 1: had long seen scurvy as an almost inevitable side effect
Speaker 1: of sending men out to sea for long periods, and
Speaker 1: they really did not know what was going on with
Speaker 1: this disease. They did not know about vitamin C or
Speaker 1: about vitamins at all. It would be more than a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty more years before Casimir Funk would coin
Speaker 1: the word vitamine to describe specific chemical substances that the
Speaker 1: body needed to survive. They did not know about collagen either.
Speaker 1: The molecular structure of collagen was not discovered until the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties. Complicating all of this, Diets that lacked vitamin
Speaker 1: C often lacked other essential nutrients as well, and outbreaks
Speaker 1: of scurvy frequently happened alongside outbreaks of contagious diseases, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't always clear exactly what disease was at work,
Speaker 1: and often multiple conditions were getting lumped together and described
Speaker 1: as scurvy. So over the centuries, various people noticed that
Speaker 1: an assortment of foods seemed to cure scurvy. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: did put that discovery in writing, but it took a
Speaker 1: really long time before navies started consistently keeping effective treatments
Speaker 1: for it on ships. This was not just a matter
Speaker 1: of people forgeting that citrus fruits cured scurvy, though it
Speaker 1: is definitely described that way sometimes, like people kind of
Speaker 1: frame it as people in the past we're great, big
Speaker 1: dummies who just kept forgetting that all that needed was oranges.
Speaker 1: In hindsight, it is really easy to see that the
Speaker 1: things that treated scurvy effectively all have vitamin C in them.
Speaker 1: But at the time, not only did people not know
Speaker 1: why any of those things actually worked, but their explanations
Speaker 1: for why they worked we're totally off base. So as
Speaker 1: people try to come up with carriers that were easier
Speaker 1: to keep fresh on ships than fruits and vegetables are,
Speaker 1: they just kept going down the completely wrong track. Often
Speaker 1: James Lynde is the one who gets credit for solving
Speaker 1: the scurvy problem, but it's of course history, so that
Speaker 1: means it's way more complicated than that, And we're going
Speaker 1: to get into all of that after we pause for
Speaker 1: a sponsor break. For hundreds of years medicine in Europe
Speaker 1: rested on the idea of humors, and this drew from
Speaker 1: Greek physicians and philosophers like Galen and Hippocrates. It also
Speaker 1: appears in the work of Persian polymath even Sina. Similar
Speaker 1: concepts are part of traditional Chinese medicine and agur Veda
Speaker 1: as well. And in terms of the understanding of scurvy
Speaker 1: and much of Europe, for hundreds of years, it was
Speaker 1: believed to be due to putrefaction of the humors, and
Speaker 1: then that puture faction was made worse by bad food,
Speaker 1: bad air, bad hygiene, or sometimes just laziness, and there
Speaker 1: were a lot of people who figured out something that
Speaker 1: worked to treat this. In fifteen seventy four, bal duenas
Speaker 1: ron Cius wrote about oranges curing scurvy in Dutch sailors.
Speaker 1: In the late sixteenth century, and Rick Oyer wrote about
Speaker 1: cloud berries treating scurvy in Norse sailors. In sixteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: John wood All published a reference book called The Surgeon's Mate,
Speaker 1: or Military and Domestic Surgery Discovering Faithfully and Plainly Ye
Speaker 1: method an Order of Ye Surgeon's Chest. Ye uses of
Speaker 1: the instruments, the virtues and operations of the medicines, with
Speaker 1: the exact cures of wounds made by gunshot and otherwise
Speaker 1: as namely wounds, appost fumes, ulcers, fistulas, fractures, dislocations with
Speaker 1: the most easy and safest ways of amputation or dismembering.
Speaker 1: The cures of the scurvy of you, fluxes of you,
Speaker 1: belly of eucolic and iliaca, Passio of ten Assimus and
Speaker 1: Exodus Ainta, and of the calend Tour, with a Treatise
Speaker 1: of ye Cure of ye plague, published for the service
Speaker 1: of His Master and of the Commonwealth by John would All, Mr.
Speaker 1: In Surgery. As that very long title mentioned, it had
Speaker 1: an entire section on scurvy and its treatment. I think
Speaker 1: we should bring back the days where we basically include
Speaker 1: the index in the title. Yeah. Well, I looked at
Speaker 1: the table of contents for it, and at one point
Speaker 1: I had the table of contents for what the section
Speaker 1: of on scurvy included in here. But it was really
Speaker 1: just like scurvy, it's description its treatment. Yeah. What All's
Speaker 1: descriptions of scurvy are similar to what we talked about
Speaker 1: earlier in the show. And as for its cure, he
Speaker 1: wrote the quote as a famous writer named Johannes Ectius,
Speaker 1: in a treatise Discorbuto, affirms consistent chiefly in four things,
Speaker 1: namely in opening obstructions, evacuating the offending humors, in altering
Speaker 1: the property of them, and in comforting and corroborating the
Speaker 1: parts late diseased. What all stresses the need to keep
Speaker 1: the cruise quarters clean and sweet, with as much high
Speaker 1: quality comfortable food as possible. But if someone does get scurvy,
Speaker 1: they should be bled and given some quote, pills of
Speaker 1: youth fourbium or otherwise pibula, ruffie or cambosia. And then
Speaker 1: after that some spoon meat, or some oatmeal or egg yolk,
Speaker 1: or a broth of currants and other fruit, or some
Speaker 1: sugar or spices, or some barley water, or some oil
Speaker 1: of vitriol which is sulfuric acid, or putting some dried
Speaker 1: wormwood in the patient's drink. And then quote further, the
Speaker 1: surgeon or his mate must not fail to persuade the
Speaker 1: governor or purser in all places where they touched in
Speaker 1: the ndies, and may have it to provide themselves of
Speaker 1: juice of oranges, limes or lemons, and at Bantham of tamarinds.
Speaker 1: In the Surgeon's mate, Wood all makes lots of references
Speaker 1: to citrus fruit, but he's really focused on when cruiser
Speaker 1: in places where those fruits grow, because quote, the sea
Speaker 1: surgeon shall do little good at sea with them, neither
Speaker 1: will they endure. Yeah, he had stuff about citrus fruit
Speaker 1: in here, but it was really about when they were
Speaker 1: on land. And he also included and so many other
Speaker 1: things that would not have been effective at all. Oil
Speaker 1: of vitriol was a very common scurvy treatment. It was
Speaker 1: literally sulfuric acid. It was that was not helpful. In
Speaker 1: sixteen twenty two, Sir Richard Hawkins, who called scurvy quote
Speaker 1: the plague of the sea and the spoil of mariners,
Speaker 1: wrote that sour lemons and oranges could treat it. In
Speaker 1: sixty five, Ambrosius Rhodius defended and published the first Scandinavian
Speaker 1: doctoral thesis, and it was on scurvy. It described treating
Speaker 1: scurvy with scurvy grass, common chick weed, watercress, mustard plants,
Speaker 1: and the cloud berries that we mentioned earlier on in
Speaker 1: the show. Ambrosius Rhodius did seem to understand that scurvy
Speaker 1: was connected to nutrition, but his ideas on how that
Speaker 1: worked were a little bit fuzzy. It was connected to
Speaker 1: the idea of canceling out opposites shower. By the late
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, people were using the word anti scorbutic to
Speaker 1: describe things they believed to be useful against scurvy. Dutch
Speaker 1: physician Johannes bach Schram used the term to describe fresh
Speaker 1: fruits and vegetables in seventeen thirty four. Also in the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, Baron Gerhard von Swieten talked about scarcity of
Speaker 1: greens and vegetables as contributing to scurvy, but he also
Speaker 1: attributed it to quote noisome vapors arising from marshy grounds
Speaker 1: and stagnating waters, in action, drinking of corrupted and stagnating waters,
Speaker 1: the use of salted and smoked flesh and fish, damp
Speaker 1: and low lodgings, as well as sorrow, nostalgia and homesickness.
Speaker 1: According to von Sweeten, treatment for scurvy involved quote, correcting
Speaker 1: the impure waters and also purging. He also made dietary
Speaker 1: recommendations quote the food should be broth with sheervil sorrel spinage, lettuce,
Speaker 1: andy suckery, cabbage, especially red cat abbage, young nettle, buds
Speaker 1: and tops, or any other sort of tender herbage boiled
Speaker 1: in it. The preference to be given to those easiest
Speaker 1: to come at. Fruit quite ripe, used moderately always produces
Speaker 1: a good effect. But if neither fruit nor greens can
Speaker 1: be procured, the patient must have his broth with barley,
Speaker 1: oats or rice. He may eat likewise a little veal
Speaker 1: or foul, but it must be moderately. So A lot
Speaker 1: of people had noted fresh fruits and vegetables, including citrus fruits,
Speaker 1: as a treatment for scurvy by the time James Lynde
Speaker 1: had entered the British Royal Navy as a surgeon's mate
Speaker 1: in seventeen thirty nine. He became a full surgeon in
Speaker 1: seventeen forty six, and he was aboard the HMS Salisbury
Speaker 1: in seventeen forty seven when there was an outbreak of scurvy.
Speaker 1: Lend did an experiment which is sometimes described as the
Speaker 1: world's first controlled clinical trial. He selected twelve sailors, all
Speaker 1: of whom had scurvy that he described as being at
Speaker 1: a similar point of progression, and he paired them up,
Speaker 1: and he gave each pair a different treatment over the
Speaker 1: course of two weeks. These were treatments that already existed
Speaker 1: for scurvy, except for seawater, which was apparently more of
Speaker 1: a placebo. Don't drink seawater. It's not a good plan.
Speaker 1: But these these pairs were each given a quart of
Speaker 1: cider per day, twenty five drops of a lixir of
Speaker 1: vitriol three times a day, half a pint of seawater
Speaker 1: a day, a nutmeg sized paste of garlic, mustard seed,
Speaker 1: horse radish, balsam of peru and gummer three times a day,
Speaker 1: two spoonfuls of vinegar three times a day, or two
Speaker 1: oranges and one lemon each day. I mean, I might
Speaker 1: opt for the nutmegs size paste of garlic, but that's
Speaker 1: just me. I mean I kind of do that. Anyway.
Speaker 1: The men who were even cider improved somewhat because of
Speaker 1: the way cider was made at the time, it probably
Speaker 1: did have some vitamin C in it. But the two
Speaker 1: men who got oranges and lemons improved so dramatically that
Speaker 1: they were determined to be well after six days, and
Speaker 1: from that point they actually helped take care of the
Speaker 1: others while he was writing about this lend reference to
Speaker 1: bile duenas Rosius writing about oranges curing Dutch sailors from
Speaker 1: like two hundred years before, and he said, quote here
Speaker 1: indeed is a remarkable and authentic proof of the great
Speaker 1: efficacy of juice of lemons against this disease. But these
Speaker 1: fruits have this particular advantage above any theory that can
Speaker 1: be prepared for trial, that they're experienced virtues have stood
Speaker 1: the test of near two hundred years. Lynde left the
Speaker 1: Navy in seventeen. In seventeen fifty three, he wrote a
Speaker 1: treatise of the Scurvy, containing an inquiry into the nature, causes,
Speaker 1: and cure of that disease, together with a critical and
Speaker 1: chronological view of what has been blished on the subject.
Speaker 1: And while this did include the sentence quote oranges and
Speaker 1: lemons were the most effectual remedies for this distemperate sea,
Speaker 1: that was only one tiny part of a four hundred
Speaker 1: page work that talked about a lot of other stuff
Speaker 1: related to scurvy. For example, he did not think there
Speaker 1: was a direct cause and effect relationship between the fruit
Speaker 1: and the scurvy. He actually thought scurvy was a digestive
Speaker 1: disease that was caused by blocked sweat glands, and that
Speaker 1: the fruit and to a lesser extent, the cider, we're
Speaker 1: all clearing those blockages. And he also thought that other
Speaker 1: blockage clearing substances could potentially have the same effect. Lynde
Speaker 1: also recognized that you cannot really just keep citrus fruits
Speaker 1: fresh on a ship for a lengthy sea voyage, so
Speaker 1: he recommended concentrating the juice into a rob, but because
Speaker 1: of the way that ROB was concentrated, the end result
Speaker 1: would not have actually contained much vitamin sea at all.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm thinking of people who drink orange flavored drink
Speaker 1: and make jokes about not getting scurvy, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: there's not really much orange. Yeah. Over the next decades,
Speaker 1: other people writing about citrus fruits and scurvy attributed their
Speaker 1: effectiveness to their being a stimulant, or because they were
Speaker 1: full of a vital air that was leaching out of
Speaker 1: sailor's bodies at sea. Irish Dr David McBride tested malt wort,
Speaker 1: which he believed provided fixed air as a scurvy treatment,
Speaker 1: although his results were clouded by the fact that he
Speaker 1: also gave some of his patients citrus fruit. Another person
Speaker 1: who claimed to conquer scurvy was Captain James Cook, and
Speaker 1: although there were some scurvy outbreaks on his voyages, there
Speaker 1: weren't any deaths because of it. His preferred scurvy preventives
Speaker 1: were portable soup which was basically bully on powder, which
Speaker 1: I am calling portable soup from now on, as well
Speaker 1: as malt and so kraut, and of those three things
Speaker 1: only the sauer kraut would have contained much vitamin C
Speaker 1: as long as they were eating it raw. He also
Speaker 1: insisted on bringing fresh provisions onto the ship at every
Speaker 1: possible stop, which would have kept them supplied more with
Speaker 1: fresh fruits and vegetables, and he also insisted on keeping
Speaker 1: the ship really clean, which would have helped slow the
Speaker 1: spread of communicable diseases. Finally, after hundreds of years of
Speaker 1: various people suggesting that citrus might play some part in
Speaker 1: curing scurvy, in sevent Gilbert Blaine got the British Royal
Speaker 1: Navy to issue lemon juice to every sailor. This worked
Speaker 1: to Britain's advantage during the Napoleonic Wars, and during the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, more and more European explorers and naval officials
Speaker 1: started stressing the need for lemon or lime juice, or
Speaker 1: for some kind of fresh vegetables on board. In one,
Speaker 1: William Perry's expedition to the Arctic took quote a shallow
Speaker 1: tray filled with mold on which to grow mustard and cress,
Speaker 1: and their parties only death from scurvy was an officer
Speaker 1: who refused to eat them. Sir John Franklin's expedition in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty five kept scurvy at bay for twenty seven
Speaker 1: months with lemon juice, with scurvy outbreaks beginning only after
Speaker 1: that supply of lemon juice ran out. For the most part,
Speaker 1: the British Navy had started out using lemon juice made
Speaker 1: from lemons from the Mediterranean to prevent scurvy. In the
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century, they instead started using limes from the
Speaker 1: Caribbean islands of Montserra and Bermuda. Part of the rash
Speaker 1: now here was the idea that lime juice was more
Speaker 1: acidic and would thus be more effective at clearing out
Speaker 1: purported blackages. There was also because Britain had claimed those
Speaker 1: islands as territories, so there was they could get things
Speaker 1: from them that was a free asset to them in
Speaker 1: their minds. For to them is the very very important
Speaker 1: part of that phrasing. But scurvy outbreaks kept happening in
Speaker 1: other places besides European navies. Scurvy was a problem during
Speaker 1: the Great Famine that started in Ireland in eighteen forty five,
Speaker 1: which would later lead people to incorrectly conclude that it
Speaker 1: was connected to potassium deficiency. When pasteurization was introduced in
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century, there was an outbreak of scurvy
Speaker 1: in babies whose families were wealthy enough to be feeding
Speaker 1: them pasteurized milk. In the early twentieth century, researchers at
Speaker 1: the Lister Institute in London realized that guinea pigs could
Speaker 1: develop a condition that seemed identical to scurvey. As we
Speaker 1: mentioned up at the top of the show, guinea pigs
Speaker 1: also cannot synthesize their own vitamin c axel Holst and
Speaker 1: Theodore Frolick discovered that if the guinea pigs were fed
Speaker 1: only grains, they became ill, but then if they were
Speaker 1: given cabbage or lemon juice, they got better. They published
Speaker 1: their work on this in nineteen oh seven and then
Speaker 1: five years later and nine team twelve was when Casimir
Speaker 1: Funk coined the term vitamine, which later morphed into vitamin.
Speaker 1: At this point, the Lister Institute was doing a lot
Speaker 1: of research into nutritional deficiencies, with many of the researchers
Speaker 1: being women. At the institute, Harriet Chick and Margaret Hume
Speaker 1: started identifying more and more foods that had anti score
Speaker 1: butic properties, including cabbage, onions, carrots, fruit juices, and potatoes.
Speaker 1: Alice Henderson Smith also researched exactly which fruits had historically
Speaker 1: been used in British Navy treatments and their efficacy. By
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, it was clear that scurvy was a
Speaker 1: deficiency and a specific nutrient, but nobody had been able
Speaker 1: to isolate the nutrient itself. Then, in night, Albert sent
Speaker 1: Jorgie isolated a compound in paprika that he named hexauronic acid,
Speaker 1: but it was later renamed a scorbic acid because of
Speaker 1: its whole anti score butic effect. In ninety seven, he
Speaker 1: was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine quote
Speaker 1: for his discoveries in connection with the biological combustion processes
Speaker 1: with special reference to vitamin C and the catalysis of
Speaker 1: fumaric acid. Today, it is of course common knowledge that
Speaker 1: vitamin C prevents scurvy, but it can still develop any
Speaker 1: time people cannot get enough vitamin C. Yeah, it's uh.
Speaker 1: I read lots of articles about various outbreaks in various
Speaker 1: places for everything from like refugee camps where there just
Speaker 1: are not adequate provisions, to like fad diets where people
Speaker 1: have tried to cut all fruit out of their diet,
Speaker 1: like just all over the place. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: as we said at the top of the show, people
Speaker 1: who have, whether it's a physiological condition or a psychological conditions,
Speaker 1: who either aren't able to eat or aren't able to
Speaker 1: absorb nutrients from their food. Lots of cases still happen today.
Speaker 1: Do you also have a little bit of list sner
Speaker 1: mail that may or may not contain vitamin C? I
Speaker 1: do have some listener mail. The first one is actually
Speaker 1: super super quick a listener tweet. UM. In the episode
Speaker 1: on Vivian Thomas, I had said I was not sure
Speaker 1: why he was given an honorary doctorate of laws instead
Speaker 1: of an honorary medical doctorate, and we got a tweet
Speaker 1: from Randy who said the m D degree is never
Speaker 1: given an honorary status, as it confers the ability to
Speaker 1: apply for a medical license, doctor of laws, of doctor
Speaker 1: of humane letters may be given in its place, depending
Speaker 1: on the institution. Uh. That is a thing that had
Speaker 1: occurred to me as the possible reason when I was researching.
Speaker 1: But then I saw that there were people who had
Speaker 1: gotten honorary m d s, and it occurred to me
Speaker 1: only after reading Randy's tweet that those people were probably
Speaker 1: already doctors because it has been a very long year. Right.
Speaker 1: I also got uh an email from Dustin who wrote
Speaker 1: in after our episodes on Jim thorpe Um to talk
Speaker 1: about the amateur athlete requirements in the Olympics, and so
Speaker 1: Dustin wrote, Holly and Tracy, I want to start by
Speaker 1: saying that although I have not been listening to your
Speaker 1: podcast for long, I absolutely love it. Recover a wide
Speaker 1: variety of interesting people from so many different fields of interest,
Speaker 1: and you always have interesting commentary as you narrate us
Speaker 1: through these lives. I appreciate your research and the details
Speaker 1: you bring in from different biographies or other sources. While
Speaker 1: listening to your first, though perhaps not last, three parter
Speaker 1: on Jim Thorpe. That really had me riveted the whole
Speaker 1: way through. I was wondering about when the Olympics changed,
Speaker 1: as it clearly now allows professional athletes to compete. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: after some of your other listener mail, I decided to
Speaker 1: poke around myself and share what I found with you.
Speaker 1: So it was not until one that the IOC removed
Speaker 1: the rule requiring amateurism. What's most interesting was it was
Speaker 1: not a result of the de leisurizing of amateur sports
Speaker 1: and the blurring line between the amateur and pro level
Speaker 1: which you spoke about in the podcast. According to what
Speaker 1: I read, it had largely to do with Eastern Bloc
Speaker 1: nations such as the USSR, sponsoring their best pros and
Speaker 1: listing them as soldiers to skirt the rules. Essentially, the
Speaker 1: Soviets cheated and broke the rules of the process. The
Speaker 1: next step was the adoption into law of the Amateur
Speaker 1: Sports Act of nineteen seventy eight, also known as the
Speaker 1: Ted Stevens Act, named for the U S senator who
Speaker 1: introduced it. This established the US Olympic Committee and allowed
Speaker 1: them to create additional national governing bodies for each sport,
Speaker 1: such as US Figure Skating and the United States Fencing Association.
Speaker 1: These bodies were basically used to select Olympic team members
Speaker 1: and govern the amateur competitions in these sports. Fun side note,
Speaker 1: the Act requires these MGB committees to be at least
Speaker 1: twenty percent voting representation to include active athletes completed within
Speaker 1: the last ten years, ensuring the athletes have some say
Speaker 1: and the way their sports are formed. UM skipping ahead, UH,
Speaker 1: tiny bit. So this wasn't necessarily a response to the
Speaker 1: factors of increased rigor at the amateur level, but spurred
Speaker 1: on by the same issues of Soviet state sponsored athletes
Speaker 1: having an upper hand, as well as the issues UH
Speaker 1: with the a AU. As you all discussed in the podcast,
Speaker 1: a AU had made some questionable decisions regarding the rules
Speaker 1: they had in place and the ways in which these
Speaker 1: rules were interpreted and enforced. So there is some more
Speaker 1: detail in the email from there. I had not looked
Speaker 1: more deeply into how the the amateur definitions and requirements
Speaker 1: had UM had developed following Jim Thorpe's time in the Olympics. UM.
Speaker 1: I know there is still so many other social and
Speaker 1: UH and representative issues going on in the world of sports, um,
Speaker 1: and it is fascinating to me that how how much
Speaker 1: of that was related to not exactly international politics, but
Speaker 1: having like grown up in the tail end of the
Speaker 1: Cold War, I was like, oh, yeah, that makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. So anyway, thank you so much Dustin
Speaker 1: for poking into all that and sending us what you found. Uh,
Speaker 1: if anyone else would like to write to us about
Speaker 1: this or any other podcast, we are at History Podcast
Speaker 1: at iHeart radio dot com, and we're all over social
Speaker 1: media at miss in History just where you'll find our Facebook, interest, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on
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Speaker 1: Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
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