Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, there's a huge gulf between your standard
Speaker 1: pop culture pirates and the real life criminals who inspired them. Movies, novels,
Speaker 1: and TV shows expect pirate characters to embrace sort of
Speaker 1: rigid stereotypes, including some with no historical basis, But these
Speaker 1: narratives tend to get one thing right, just like many
Speaker 1: of their fictional counterparts. The pirates of your had a
Speaker 1: healthy fear of scurvy caused by a prolonged lack of
Speaker 1: vitamin C in one's diet. Scurvy has been affecting people
Speaker 1: since time immemorial. Symptoms include tooth loss, slow healing wounds,
Speaker 1: and arrested bone growth, and if left unchecked, it can
Speaker 1: ultimately result in death from internal bleeding. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: this ailment is far more danger than you may realize,
Speaker 1: and scurvy remains at large today, with those living in
Speaker 1: poverty being especially prone to the disorder. Many animals, including
Speaker 1: over four thousand kinds of our fellow mammals, never get
Speaker 1: scurvy because they produce their own vitamin C, but a
Speaker 1: handful of creatures are unable to manufacture it. These unlucky
Speaker 1: beasts include fruit bats, guinea pigs, and primates. Like us,
Speaker 1: Scientists don't know why our ancestors lost the ability to
Speaker 1: make vitamin C. Other species use a specific gene to
Speaker 1: create an enzyme that's needed for the vitamin's production process. However,
Speaker 1: in the human body, that gene isn't functional. We thus
Speaker 1: have no choice but to acquire vitamin C by ingesting it. Lemons, oranges,
Speaker 1: and other citrus fruits are loaded with the stuff, as
Speaker 1: are fresh green veggies like broccoli and spinach. You can
Speaker 1: also find it in potatoes, tomatoes, and red peppers, among
Speaker 1: other things that actually might help explain humankind's gene problem.
Speaker 1: Our distant ancestors lived in lush tropical areas and got
Speaker 1: plenty of vitamin C in their fruit heavy diets, so
Speaker 1: if a random mutation prevented some individuals from manufacturing the vitamin,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have hurt their odds of survival because fruits
Speaker 1: and vegetables were widely available. Since the mutation was harmless,
Speaker 1: natural selection didn't weed it out, and over time the
Speaker 1: genetic quirk spread. Unfortunately, by the dawn of human civilization,
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens had settled in places where vitamin C rich
Speaker 1: foods weren't always easy to find. But okay, why do
Speaker 1: we need vitamin C and what happens when we don't
Speaker 1: get it? Vitamin C plays a critical role in the
Speaker 1: synthesis of collagen. Collagen is a type of protein that
Speaker 1: your body uses to add structure, strength, and flexibility to
Speaker 1: all kinds of different tissues. Tendons and bones derive much
Speaker 1: of their support opacity from collagen fibers. A Collagen also
Speaker 1: makes your skin tough but elastic, and helps blood clot
Speaker 1: and cuts to heal when injured. It also lends a
Speaker 1: hand in reinforcing the walls of your blood vessels and
Speaker 1: your internal organs to keep making collagen. A healthy and
Speaker 1: properly fed human body will burn through about eight to
Speaker 1: ten milligrams of vitamin C every day. That's about zero
Speaker 1: point zero zero zero three ounces, although it's recommended that
Speaker 1: adults eat at least ten times that amount, and if
Speaker 1: that sounds like a small number, it kind of is.
Speaker 1: You can get your daily recommended intake by eating an
Speaker 1: orange or a cup worth about two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: milli liters of fruit or vegetables like strawberries, bell pepper,
Speaker 1: or brussels sprouts, and fruits and veggies aren't the only
Speaker 1: place you can get vitamin C. A case in point
Speaker 1: many of the Arctics indigenous peoples who for millennia subsisted
Speaker 1: on traditional meat based diets with very few vegetables and fruits,
Speaker 1: but they rarely experienced scurvy outbreaks because it turns out
Speaker 1: that some raw meats are a pretty good source of
Speaker 1: vitamin C, and lots of organ meat like caribou liver,
Speaker 1: is naturally rich in it. However, you get your vitamin C,
Speaker 1: your bloodstream is really good at distributing it around the body.
Speaker 1: But if you go sixty to ninety days without ingesting
Speaker 1: any and your internal supply dips too low, a scurvy
Speaker 1: will begin to take hold. At first, it's hardly noticeable.
Speaker 1: In the early stages, a person will feel lethargic, a weak,
Speaker 1: and achy. They may also experience weight loss and a
Speaker 1: reduced appetite. As time wears on, symptoms get more grotesque
Speaker 1: unless the person writes the ship by ingesting more vitamin C.
Speaker 1: Unchecked scurvy causes the gums to swell, bleed, and loosen
Speaker 1: the teeth at their roots. A pain breaks out in
Speaker 1: the joints and muscles. The skin loses its ability to
Speaker 1: form scar tissue, so old wounds may reopen and new
Speaker 1: ones will refuse to hear. Internal bleeding causes splotchy marks
Speaker 1: to appear under the skin, and deeper down the bones
Speaker 1: themselves will become weak. If the disorder isn't treated, a
Speaker 1: fevers arise and gangrene sets in. Slowly but surely. The
Speaker 1: person will die, often as the result of a fatal
Speaker 1: hemorrhage in the heart or brain. The explorer Robert Falcon
Speaker 1: Scott wrote that once late stage scurvy has taken hold, quote,
Speaker 1: death is a merciful release. Scott famously died in the
Speaker 1: Antarctic in nineteen twelve, by which time scurvy had been
Speaker 1: a global nuisance for thousands of years. Hippocrates was aware
Speaker 1: of it, and an Egyptian document written in fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: BCE describes the malady symptoms. A scurvy was prevalent during
Speaker 1: the Crusades, when armies were made to march across vast
Speaker 1: distances with limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables. It
Speaker 1: also claimed a number of lives during the Irish potato
Speaker 1: famine and the American Civil War. Early seafarers like the
Speaker 1: Phoenicians and the Vikings carried fresh food on voyages, and
Speaker 1: they didn't report the disease. However, scurvy became associated with
Speaker 1: sailing when between around fifteen hundred and eighteen hundred CE,
Speaker 1: some two million sailors died of it. Scurvy was the
Speaker 1: leading cause of naval death at the time, outstripping battles
Speaker 1: and disasters. This was due to the poor diet of
Speaker 1: colonial era sailors. They ate mainly food that wouldn't spoil
Speaker 1: on long voyages, like salted meats, hard biscuits, beer, and peas,
Speaker 1: no fresh fruits or veggies on the menu. A living
Speaker 1: conditions aboard ship were also cramped and damp, which worsened
Speaker 1: the disease, as research has shown that people need more
Speaker 1: vitamin C in cold, damp conditions. The affliction's prevalence on
Speaker 1: the high seas started to decline after seventeen forty seven,
Speaker 1: which is when Scottish position James Lynde conducted the world's
Speaker 1: first clinical trial to demonstrate that lemons and oranges could
Speaker 1: cure scurvy. He gave different groups of sailors a variety
Speaker 1: of treatments for scurvy, and the citrus eating group was
Speaker 1: the only one to recover. Although Lynde wasn't the first
Speaker 1: person to suggest citrus as a cure, his published writings
Speaker 1: have been credited with spreading the knowledge. Some forty years later,
Speaker 1: in seventeen ninety five, the British Navy finally decreed that
Speaker 1: each sailor be given a daily ration of lemon juice.
Speaker 1: A later lime juice, and scurvy started to disappear from
Speaker 1: its fleet. Yet, despite the breakthroughs of lind and other researchers,
Speaker 1: scurvy was never completely eradicated. Around the world, scurvy cases
Speaker 1: tend to pop up in communities where residents don't have
Speaker 1: reliable access to foods that are rich in vitamin C.
Speaker 1: For example, following a drought in twenty seventeen, an outbreak
Speaker 1: of the disorder occurred in Kenya. It's also been reported
Speaker 1: that a full ninety five percent of the houseless population
Speaker 1: in Paris, France, is vitamin C deficient and therefore vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Over in the United Kingdom, the rate of scurvy related
Speaker 1: hospital admissions rose by twenty seven percent between twenty nine
Speaker 1: and twenty fourteen with a corresponding increase in malnutrition, and
Speaker 1: in recent years, multiple cases of scurvy have been documented
Speaker 1: within the United States, usually in low income populations a children,
Speaker 1: elderly people, people with food allergies, and crash dieters may
Speaker 1: also be at risk of developing scurvy. But there is
Speaker 1: good news. Scurvy isn't hard to treat. Post diagnosis, it
Speaker 1: could be remedied by increasing the patient's supply vitamin C.
Speaker 1: One can usually expect to make a complete recovery after
Speaker 1: about three months, and bleeding in the gums and skin
Speaker 1: can stop and as little as twenty four hours after
Speaker 1: receiving treatment. Today's episode is based on the article Scurvy,
Speaker 1: The Scourge of the High Seas Remains at Large Today
Speaker 1: on House Tofforkstyle, written by Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com,
Speaker 1: and it is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts
Speaker 1: from my heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.