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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Our recent installment of six Impossible episodes talked

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Speaker 1: about Nelly Cashman's efforts to get fresh vegetables to some

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Speaker 1: miners who were starving and developing scurvy. I don't remember

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Speaker 1: if we mentioned it in that episode, but we do

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Speaker 1: have a whole episode on the history of scurvy in

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Speaker 1: It's Today's Saturday Classic. It came out on December thirtieth,

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty, and you can tell we were a little

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Speaker 1: frazzled after months of relative isolation in that first stretch

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Speaker 1: of the COVID nineteen pandemic. We got a couple of

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Speaker 1: corrections after this first came out. We talk about the

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Speaker 1: genetic mutation that kept our long ago ancestors from being

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Speaker 1: able to produce their own vitamin C, but that wasn't

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Speaker 1: a big issue because overwhelmingly they were living in tropical

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Speaker 1: areas and eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. We

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Speaker 1: say that had they not been eating lots of foods

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Speaker 1: that were rich in vitamin C, they would have died out.

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Speaker 1: One letter writer noted that only the people carrying the

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Speaker 1: mutation would have died out. Everybody else would have been fine.

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Speaker 1: Another correction from another listener pointed out that we did

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Speaker 1: not explain that heat breaks down vitamin C. We talked

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Speaker 1: about vitamin C being destroyed by cooking and by pasteurization

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Speaker 1: and by concentrating juice down into a rob which is

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Speaker 1: done by boiling. So heat is the common element among

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Speaker 1: all those things. And the last is that we read

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Speaker 1: the full title of the reference book, The Surgeon's Mate,

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Speaker 1: which was full of the word yee spelled ye. This

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Speaker 1: correction noted that the why there was in place of

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Speaker 1: the character thorn, which would be pronounced th which is true,

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Speaker 1: but would not have been nearly as funny. So enjoy.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production

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Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy P.

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Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. This episode is the last

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Speaker 1: episode I am for the year twenty twenty. It's been

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Speaker 1: a year. Hooray, yeah, hooray. Also, I'm just I've had

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Speaker 1: minimal contact with anybody besides my spouse in almost nine months,

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Speaker 1: and for some reason, my brain keeps being like scurvy.

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Speaker 1: And that connection doesn't make sense really, because if I

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Speaker 1: were to get a vitamin deficiency because of the pandemic,

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Speaker 1: it would probably be about vitamin D from the not

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Speaker 1: going out into the sun. Is that what you're saying

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Speaker 1: is that your brain is making a weird jump of

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Speaker 1: concern of vitamin deficiency. Maybe not concern, but maybe more

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Speaker 1: like at least I don't have scurvy, like huh, but brain,

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Speaker 1: that doesn't make any sense anyway. That's what we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about today, is scurvy because just for some

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Speaker 1: weird reason, my brain keeps coming back around to it

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Speaker 1: in these times of winter and pandemic. So skirv in

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Speaker 1: case you don't know, and you probably do, is a

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Speaker 1: deficiency in vitamin C or a sorbic acid, and its

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Speaker 1: story goes way way back in history, all the way

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Speaker 1: to our evolutionary ancestors living more than sixty million years ago.

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Speaker 1: With a few exceptions including guinea pigs and bats. Most

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Speaker 1: mammals can generate their own acorbic acid, and that included

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Speaker 1: those primate ancestors. But somewhere along the way, a random

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Speaker 1: genetic mutation broke the ability to produce an enzyme known

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Speaker 1: as L glunolactone oxidase or GULO, which is a necessary

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Speaker 1: part of making a sorbic acid. Acorbic acid is also

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Speaker 1: necessary the body uses it to synthesize the protein collagen,

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Speaker 1: and collagen is a crucially important part of our connective tissue.

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Speaker 1: We need it to do really important things like hold

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Speaker 1: our skin and blood vessels together. So if the body

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Speaker 1: cannot replace worn out collagen, it causes serious problems. The

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Speaker 1: first symptoms of scurvy involve fatigu lethargy, and aching joints.

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Speaker 1: People start to bruise easily, wounds won't heal, and old

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Speaker 1: wounds reopen. The gums start to bleed, and the teeth

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Speaker 1: start to loosen and can in fact come out entirely.

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Speaker 1: This is also accompanied by foul odors, including very bad breath.

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Speaker 1: Without treatment with vitamin C, scurvy is eventually fatal, often

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Speaker 1: because of acute internal bleeding around the brain or heart.

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Speaker 1: But when our ancestors stopped being able to produce guloh,

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Speaker 1: this really did not matter. They were living in tropical

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Speaker 1: areas and their diets included lots of fresh fruits and vegetables,

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Speaker 1: so they were getting plenty of vitamin C through their food.

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Speaker 1: If this had not been true, this genetic mutation that

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Speaker 1: shut off the ability to synthesize guloh would have wiped

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Speaker 1: them out, but since their diets were rich with vitamin C,

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Speaker 1: they continued to thrive. As people started living farther from

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Speaker 1: tropical areas, they started eating more foods that did not

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Speaker 1: necessarily contain as much vitamin CEA, but most of the

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Speaker 1: time this was still not a big problem. Most dietary

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Speaker 1: recommendations call for significantly more vitamin C, but it doesn't

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Speaker 1: actually take that much just to prevent scurvy. Only about

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Speaker 1: ten milligrams a day are all you need, and although

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Speaker 1: vitamin C is mostly associated with fruits and vegetables, it

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Speaker 1: is found in other foods as well. Most meat contains

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Speaker 1: a little if it hasn't been cooked too long, and

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Speaker 1: liver and kidney meat in particular contained quite a bit

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Speaker 1: of it. So, as one example, the practice of eating

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Speaker 1: raw organ meat in far northern indigenous communities provides protection

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Speaker 1: from scurvy even when plant based foods are unavailable or

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Speaker 1: out of season. So as communities established themselves around the world,

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Speaker 1: people had to have some kind of vitamin C in

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Speaker 1: their diets, otherwise that community just could not survive. But

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Speaker 1: anytime that access to food was cut off in some way,

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Speaker 1: say because of a war or a famine, people could

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Speaker 1: start to develop scurvy. And this was also true for

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Speaker 1: people with diseases and conditions that kept them from eating

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Speaker 1: or kept them from absorbing the nutrients and their food.

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Speaker 1: And the word scurvy comes from older terms that mean lazy, scabbed,

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Speaker 1: or scurf, which used to be used to describe dandruff.

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Speaker 1: People started using it to describe this disease in about

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Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, but written descriptions of scurvy that predate

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Speaker 1: that word are much older. The earliest likely description of

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Speaker 1: scurvy is found in the Egyptian document known as the

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Speaker 1: ebers Papyrus, which dates back to about fifteen hundred BCE.

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Speaker 1: Past podcast subject Shushruda described a condition involving bleeding gums

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Speaker 1: and loosening teeth around eight hundred BCE. Roughly four hundred

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Speaker 1: years later, Greek physician Hippocrates described what was probably scurvy,

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Speaker 1: and while he did not go into detail about the

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Speaker 1: cure he knew for it, he did note that it

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Speaker 1: wasn't effective and that patients usually died Ditional Chinese medicine

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Speaker 1: texts describe collections of symptoms that very much resemble scurvy

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Speaker 1: as well, so today scurvy is associated with long sea

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Speaker 1: voyages and his humanity took to the sea. People worked

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Speaker 1: out some ways to prevent it, although really without necessarily

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Speaker 1: knowing that that was what they were doing. Many of

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Speaker 1: the earliest seafarers stuck close to the coasts or they

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Speaker 1: island topped, and that gave them plenty of opportunities to

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Speaker 1: stock up on fresh food. But as voyages got longer,

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Speaker 1: many also had foods on board that were rich in

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Speaker 1: vitamin C. It's possible that Polynesian wayfinders introduced sweet potatoes

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Speaker 1: to Central and South America. They would have brought them

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Speaker 1: with them over thousands of miles of ocean, and sweet

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Speaker 1: potatoes contained vitamin C. Scandinavians stocked their ships with cloud berries,

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Speaker 1: which have about four times as much vitamin C as

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Speaker 1: oranges do. Unpasteurized milk also contains vitamin SEA, so seafarers

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Speaker 1: who had dairy animals on board could get it that way.

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Speaker 1: While scurvy was common enough to be documented in ancient

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Speaker 1: medical literature, one of the first specifically documented outbreaks happened

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Speaker 1: in the thirteenth century during the Eighth Crusade. King Louis

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Speaker 1: the ninth lay siege to Tunis. Although there were plenty

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Speaker 1: of fresh fruits and vegetables available in the area, the

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Speaker 1: king and his fighting force were mostly eating fish, and

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Speaker 1: many were also undertaking religious fasts. The king and about

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Speaker 1: a sixth of his men died of disease during this siege.

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Speaker 1: For a long time, their deaths were attributed to plague,

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Speaker 1: but more recent research has found evidence of scurvy in

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Speaker 1: the king's jawbone. Not long after this, scurvy started to

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Speaker 1: become a serious problem on European ships during long sea voyages,

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Speaker 1: and most of the literature that's related to scurvy in

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Speaker 1: history today is focused primarily on Europe and its colonies,

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Speaker 1: mostly during the Age of Exploration, which was from a

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Speaker 1: about the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. But of course

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Speaker 1: Europeans were not the only people taking to the sea

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Speaker 1: at this point. It's possible that other nations aren't as

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Speaker 1: represented in English language literature because of language barriers or prejudice,

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Speaker 1: but it's also possible that scurvy was just not as

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Speaker 1: much of a problem outside of European fleets. Most of

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Speaker 1: the time, it takes between two months and twelve weeks

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Speaker 1: without vitamin CEA for a person to develop scurvy, and

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Speaker 1: while sailors from parts of Africa and Asia were taking

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Speaker 1: voyages that lasted much longer than that, overall, often they

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Speaker 1: were not going that long between stops to resupply. It

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Speaker 1: also seems like they may have been doing a better

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Speaker 1: job at providing their crews with foods rich in vitamin Sea.

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Speaker 1: Past podcast subject Ibin Batuta, who was from what's now

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Speaker 1: Morocco and traveled extensively during the fourteenth century, described green

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Speaker 1: vegetables and ginger being grown in tanks on Chinese vessels.

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Speaker 1: He also wrote about salted ginger, pepper, lemon, and mangoes

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Speaker 1: being loaded onto ships in preparation for long voyages. Another

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Speaker 1: previous podcast subject is Jungha, who led fleets of treasure

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Speaker 1: ships from China all the way to Africa in the

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Speaker 1: fifteenth century, and we don't have lists of exactly what

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Speaker 1: provisions he took, but we do know that his fleets

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Speaker 1: included huge supply vessels whose whole purpose was sustaining the

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Speaker 1: voyage itself, and that the ships had kitchens that prepared

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Speaker 1: meals for crews and passengers. There are also multiple references

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Speaker 1: to tea in relation to his voyages, and tea does

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Speaker 1: contain some vitamin C. For the most part, written records

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Speaker 1: of scurvy on Chinese vessels don't really start until the

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Speaker 1: nineteenth century, when people left China bound for California during

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Speaker 1: the Gold Rush. But European ships were another story. Especially

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Speaker 1: as European ships crossed whole oceans. People's diets were often

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Speaker 1: restricted to salted meat and hardtack and not much else. Typically,

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Speaker 1: any vegetables grown on board were only for the officers. Consequently,

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Speaker 1: it's estimated that scurvy killed two million European sailors between

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Speaker 1: the fifteenth century and the nineteenth century, which is when

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Speaker 1: navies started to more consistently connect scurvy prevention to things

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Speaker 1: like citrus juice. During these centuries, scurvy was the leading

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Speaker 1: cause of death among sailors at sea. It was also

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Speaker 1: a major cause of death among enslaved Africans during the

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Speaker 1: Transatlantic slave trade, although the details of that aspect have

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Speaker 1: not been nearly as specifically documented as with ship's crews.

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Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about some more specific scurvy

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Speaker 1: information after we first pause for a little sponsor break. Today,

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Speaker 1: scurvy is treated almost like a punchline in pirate jokes,

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Speaker 1: but it was an enormous problem for hundreds of years.

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Speaker 1: Scurvy killed a hundred of the original one hundred and

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Speaker 1: seventy crew during Vasco de Gama's voyage to the Indian

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Speaker 1: subcontinent that started in fourteen ninety seven. For Nan Magellan

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Speaker 1: left Spain with a fleet of five ships in fifteen nineteen,

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Speaker 1: searching for a way to reach Asia from Europe by

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Speaker 1: traveling west by sea. Only eighteen of his original crew

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Speaker 1: of two hundred and seventy made it back to Spain

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Speaker 1: in fifteen twenty two, with scurvy being a major cause

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Speaker 1: of death. Here is how one of Magellan's crew described

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Speaker 1: conditions in his journal quote, we ate only old biscuit,

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Speaker 1: reduced to powder and full of grubs and stinking from

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Speaker 1: the dirt which the rats had made on it when

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Speaker 1: eating the good biscuit, and we drank water that was

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Speaker 1: yellow and stinking. The men were so hungry that if

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Speaker 1: any of them caught a rat, he could sell it

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Speaker 1: for a high price to someone who would eat it.

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Speaker 1: In fifteen thirty five, French explorer Jacques Cartier established a

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Speaker 1: fort across the Saint Charles River from the Iroquoisan village

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Speaker 1: of Stadacona that's near what's now Quebec City. That winter

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Speaker 1: was extremely harsh. Cardier's ships became ice bound. They were

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Speaker 1: not able to return to France's planned and when they

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Speaker 1: heard of an illness that was spreading through the indigenous population,

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Speaker 1: they tried to cut off contact with them, but then

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Speaker 1: that same illness started to spread through Cardier's own men.

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Speaker 1: In an account translated by Richard Hacklett, it's described as

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Speaker 1: this quote. Some did lose their strength and could not

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Speaker 1: stand on their feet. Then did their legs swell. Their

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Speaker 1: sinnow's shrink as black as any coal. Others also had

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Speaker 1: all their skins spotted with spots of blood of a

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Speaker 1: purple color. Then did ascend up to their ankles, knees, thighs, shoulders, arms,

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Speaker 1: and neck. Their mouth became stinking, their gums so rotten

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Speaker 1: that all the flesh did fall off, even to the

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Speaker 1: roots of the teeth, which also all fall out. About

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Speaker 1: the middle of February, of one hundredth and ten persons

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Speaker 1: that we were there were not ten whole. There were

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Speaker 1: already eight dead, and more than fifty six. And as

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Speaker 1: we saw it, passed all hope of recovery, so at

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Speaker 1: some point Cardier went for a walk and encountered Domagaya,

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Speaker 1: who was the son of Doncona, who was the chief

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Speaker 1: of Stadacona. Domagaya told Cardier about a treatment for this disease,

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Speaker 1: which was to prepare a tea from the leaves of

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Speaker 1: a local tree. This tree is not conclusively identified today,

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Speaker 1: but the most likely candidate is the eastern white cedar,

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Speaker 1: whose leaves always contain some vitamincy but have a whole

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Speaker 1: lot more of it in the new growth that comes

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Speaker 1: out in the early spring. Although at least twenty five

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Speaker 1: men in the fort died of scurvy, this cure was

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Speaker 1: effective for the ones who survived. There is a court,

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Speaker 1: of course, a whole lot more to this story outside

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Speaker 1: the part about scurvy. Cardier had actually abducted Domagaia and

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Speaker 1: his brother on his earlier voyage and forced them to

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Speaker 1: accompany him back to France, bringing them back to North

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Speaker 1: America with him in fifteen thirty five, and at the

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Speaker 1: end of his second voyage, Cardier abducted them for a

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Speaker 1: second time, along with their father and seven other indigenous people.

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Speaker 1: All but one of them died before Cardier returned to

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Speaker 1: North America for his third voyage in fifteen forty one.

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Speaker 1: Probably the most dramatic and notorious outbreak of scurvy at

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Speaker 1: sea was during George Anson's four year voyage around the world,

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Speaker 1: which started in seventeen forty. Britain was at war with Spain,

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Speaker 1: and because of the war, Anson had a serious labor shortage.

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Speaker 1: Even press gangs, who were abducting men off the street

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Speaker 1: to force them to serve in the Royal Navy could

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Speaker 1: not provide him with enough men for his fleet. Eventually,

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Speaker 1: this gap was filled with men from Chelsea Hospital, most

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Speaker 1: of whom were sick, injured, or elderly to the point

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Speaker 1: that they weren't able to just leave on their own.

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Speaker 1: When they got released from the hospital. The people who

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Speaker 1: did have the capacity to just walk away did that,

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Speaker 1: so he was left with like the oldest, sickest men

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Speaker 1: from the hospital. And then there were delays in outfitting

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Speaker 1: the ships, and the crews ate nothing but ships rations

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Speaker 1: for months as they waited, and while there were treatments

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Speaker 1: for scurvy on board, none of them contained much, if

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Speaker 1: any vitamin C, so they did not actually work for

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Speaker 1: the most part. They were also really unpleasant, like drinking

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Speaker 1: a bunch of straight vinegar. I like vinegar and vinegary things,

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Speaker 1: but the idea of just gulping down a whole bunch

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Speaker 1: of it does not sound great to me. Hard pass.

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Speaker 1: Once they finally got underway, they sailed through terrible storms

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Speaker 1: and were blown off course by April of seventeen forty one.

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Speaker 1: Most of the men who had survived those treacherous seas

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Speaker 1: had then developed scurvy. By June, they were down from

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Speaker 1: six ships to only three, with only three high hundred

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Speaker 1: and thirty five survivors out of about thirteen hundred original crew.

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Speaker 1: Finally they reached the Wan Fernandez Islands off the coast

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Speaker 1: of Chile. These were home to plenty of fresh fruits

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Speaker 1: and vegetables, and as the ships took on fresh provisions

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Speaker 1: and the men ate these foods, they gradually began to recover.

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Speaker 1: But because their conditions were so dire, when they started

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Speaker 1: getting more vitamin C into their bodies, it actually took

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Speaker 1: more than a month before men stopped dying of scurvy.

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Speaker 1: Anson's dwindling fleet was struck by scurvy again in the

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Speaker 1: Pacific Ocean in the summer of seventeen forty two, so

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Speaker 1: obviously after they had run out of the fresh provisions

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Speaker 1: that they brought on board. When his two remaining ships

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Speaker 1: finally got to China, there were only two hundred and

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Speaker 1: twenty seven of the original crew still living. In spite

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Speaker 1: of that, they managed to capture a Spanish galleon that

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Speaker 1: was bound for Manila on June twentieth of seventeen forty three,

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Speaker 1: and then with a holy one hundred and forty five

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Speaker 1: five of the original men, they made it back to Britain.

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Speaker 1: Because they had captured the Spanish galleon, they were treated

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Speaker 1: as heroes, with treasures from the galleon paraded through the

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Speaker 1: streets of London, and Anson named first Lord of the

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Speaker 1: Admiralty in seventeen fifty one. At this point, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it might seem a little weird for the person who

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Speaker 1: was in charge when all of these people died to

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Speaker 1: then become the first Lord of the Admiralty. But at

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Speaker 1: this point European naval officials had long seen scurvy as

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Speaker 1: an almost inevitable side effect of sending men out to

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Speaker 1: sea for long periods, and they really did not know

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Speaker 1: what was going on with this disease. They did not

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Speaker 1: know about vitamin C, or about vitamins at all. It

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Speaker 1: would be more than one hundred and fifty more years

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Speaker 1: before Casimir Funk would coin the word vitamin to describe

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Speaker 1: specific chemical substances that the body needed to survive. They

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Speaker 1: did not know about collagen either. The molecular structure of

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Speaker 1: collagen was not discovered until the Night teaen thirties. Complicating

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Speaker 1: all of this, diets that lacked vitamin C often lacked

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Speaker 1: other essential nutrients as well, and outbreaks of scurvy frequently

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Speaker 1: happened alongside outbreaks of contagious diseases, so it wasn't always

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Speaker 1: clear exactly what disease was at work, and often multiple

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Speaker 1: conditions were getting lumped together and described as scurvy. So

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Speaker 1: over the centuries, various people noticed that an assortment of

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Speaker 1: foods seemed to cure scurvy. Sometimes they did put that

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Speaker 1: discovery in writing, but it took a really long time

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Speaker 1: before navies started consistently keeping effective treatments for it on ships.

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Speaker 1: This was not just a matter of people forgetting that

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Speaker 1: citrus fruits cured scurvy, though it is definitely described that

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Speaker 1: way sometimes like people kind of frame it as people

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Speaker 1: in the past were great, big dummies who just kept

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Speaker 1: forgetting that all they needed was oranges. In hindsight, it

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Speaker 1: is really easy to see that the things that treated

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Speaker 1: scurvy effectively all have vitamin C in them. But at

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Speaker 1: the time, not only did people not know why any

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Speaker 1: of those things actually worked, but their explanations for why

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Speaker 1: they worked were totally off base. So as people tried

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Speaker 1: to come up with cures that were easier to keep

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Speaker 1: fresh on ships than fruits and vegetables are, it just

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Speaker 1: kept going down the completely wrong track. Often James Lynde

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Speaker 1: is the one who gets credit for solving this scurvy problem,

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Speaker 1: but it's of course history, so that means it's way

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Speaker 1: more complicated than that, And we're going to get into

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Speaker 1: all of that after we pause for a sponsor break.

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Speaker 1: For hundreds of years, medicine in Europe rested on the

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Speaker 1: idea of humors, and this drew from Greek physicians and

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Speaker 1: philosophers like Galen and Hippocrates. It also appears in the

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Speaker 1: work of Persian polymath Ebn Sina. Similar concepts are part

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Speaker 1: of traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda as well, and in

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Speaker 1: terms of the understanding of scurvy and much of Europe.

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Speaker 1: For hundreds of years it was believed to be due

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Speaker 1: to putrefaction of the humors, and then that puture faction

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Speaker 1: was made worse by bad food, bad air, bad hygiene,

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Speaker 1: or sometimes just laziness, and there were a lot of

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Speaker 1: people who figured out something that worked to treat this.

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Speaker 1: In fifteen seventy four, Balduinus Roncius wrote about oranges curing

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Speaker 1: scurvy in Dutch sailors. In the late sixteenth century, Enrich

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Speaker 1: Euer wrote about cloudberry's treating scurvy in Norse sailors. In

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Speaker 1: sixteen seventeen, John Woodall published a reference book called The

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Speaker 1: Surgeon's Mate, or Military and Domestique Surgery Discovering Faithfully and

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Speaker 1: plainly YE method. An order of ye Surgeon's chest, Ye

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Speaker 1: uses of the instruments, the virtues and operations of YE medicines,

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Speaker 1: with the exact cures of wounds made by gunshot and

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Speaker 1: otherwise as namely wounds, appost fumes, ulcers, fistulas, fractures, dislocations

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Speaker 1: with the most easy and safest ways of amputation or dismembering.

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Speaker 1: The cures of the scurvy of Ye, fluxes of you,

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Speaker 1: belly of ucolic and Iliaca Passio of Tenasimus and exotus Ana,

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Speaker 1: and of the calend Tour with a Treatise of Ye

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Speaker 1: Cure of ye Plague, published for the service of His

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Speaker 1: Master and of the Commonwealth by John Woodhall, mister in surgery.

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Speaker 1: As that very long title mentioned, it had an entire

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Speaker 1: section on scurvy and its treatment. I think we should

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Speaker 1: bring back the days where we basically include the index

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Speaker 1: in the title. Yeah. Well, I looked at the table

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Speaker 1: of contents for it, and at one point I had

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Speaker 1: the table of contents for what the section on scurvy

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Speaker 1: included in here, But it was really like scurvy, it's description,

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Speaker 1: it's treatment. Yeah. What All's descriptions of scurvy are similar

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Speaker 1: to what we talked about earlier in the show. And

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Speaker 1: as for its cure, he wrote that quote as a

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Speaker 1: famous writer named Johannes Ekteus in a treatise Discorbuto a

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Speaker 1: Firmus consisted chiefly in four things, namely in opening obstructions,

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Speaker 1: evacuating the offending humors, in altering the property of them,

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Speaker 1: and in comforting and corroborating the parts late diseased. What

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Speaker 1: All stresses the need to keep the cruise quarters clean

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Speaker 1: and sweet, with as much high quality, comfortable food as possible.

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Speaker 1: But if someone does get scurvy, they should be bled

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Speaker 1: and given some quote pills of euphorbium or otherwise pibula

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Speaker 1: ruffy or cambosia. And then after that some spoon meat

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Speaker 1: or some oatmeal or egg yolk, or a broth of

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Speaker 1: currants and other fruit, or some sugar or spices, or

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Speaker 1: some barley water, or some oil of vitrey which is

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Speaker 1: sulfuric acid, or putting some dried wormwood in the patient's drink.

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Speaker 1: And then quote further, the surgeon or his mate must

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Speaker 1: not fail to persuade the governor or purser in all

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Speaker 1: places where they touched in the Indies, and may have

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Speaker 1: it to provide themselves of juice of oranges, limes or lemons,

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Speaker 1: and at bantham of tamarinds. In the surgeon's mate. Woodall

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Speaker 1: makes lots of references to citrus fruit, but he's really

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Speaker 1: focused on when cruiser in places where those fruits grow,

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Speaker 1: because quote, the sea surgeon shall do little good at

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Speaker 1: sea with them, neither will they endure. Yeah, he had

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Speaker 1: stuff about citrus fruit in here, but it was really

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Speaker 1: about when they were on land. And he also included

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Speaker 1: so many other things that would not have been effective

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Speaker 1: at all. Oil of vitriol was a very common scurvy treatment.

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Speaker 1: It was literally sulfuric acid that was not helpful. In

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Speaker 1: sixteen twenty two, Sir Richard Hawkins, who called scurvy quote

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Speaker 1: the plague of the sea and the spoil of mariners,

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Speaker 1: wrote that sour lemons and oranges could treat it. In

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Speaker 1: sixteen thirty five, Ambrosius Rhodius defended and published the first

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Speaker 1: Scandinavian doctoral thesis, and it was on scurvy. It described

401
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Speaker 1: treating scurvy with scurvy grass, common chickweed, watercress, mustard plants,

402
00:25:22,080 --> 00:25:24,439
Speaker 1: and the cloud berries that we mentioned earlier on in

403
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:29,240
Speaker 1: the show. Ambrosius Roodius did seem to understand that scurvy

404
00:25:29,320 --> 00:25:32,679
Speaker 1: was connected to nutrition, but his ideas on how that

405
00:25:32,760 --> 00:25:35,760
Speaker 1: worked were a little bit fuzzy. It was connected to

406
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Speaker 1: the idea of canceling out opposites. Sure. By the late

407
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Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, people were using the word anti scorbutic to

408
00:25:44,560 --> 00:25:49,000
Speaker 1: describe things they believed to be useful against scurvy. Dutch

409
00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:53,040
Speaker 1: physician Johannes Bachscham used the term to describe fresh fruits

410
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Speaker 1: and vegetables in seventeen thirty four. Also in the eighteenth century,

411
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Speaker 1: Baron Gehard von Sweeden talked about scarcity of greens and

412
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Speaker 1: vegetables as contributing to scurvy, but he also attributed it

413
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Speaker 1: to quote noisome vapors arising from marshy grounds and stagnating waters,

414
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:15,200
Speaker 1: in action, drinking of corrupted and stagnating waters, the use

415
00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:19,640
Speaker 1: of salted and smoked flesh and fish, damp and low lodgings,

416
00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:25,600
Speaker 1: as well as sorrow, nostalgia and homesickness. According to von Sweeten,

417
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:30,960
Speaker 1: treatment for scurvy involved quote, correcting the impure waters and

418
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:35,440
Speaker 1: also purging. He also made dietary recommendations quote the food

419
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Speaker 1: should be broth with shrvil sorrel, spinach, lettuce, hodie, suckery, cabbage,

420
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Speaker 1: especially red cabbage, young nettle, buds and tops, or any

421
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Speaker 1: other sort of tender herbage boiled in it. The preference

422
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Speaker 1: to be given to those easiest to come at. Fruit

423
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Speaker 1: quite ripe used moderately always produces a good effect. But

424
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Speaker 1: if neither fruit nor greens can be pre cured, the

425
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:04,240
Speaker 1: patient must have his broth with barley oats or rice.

426
00:27:04,560 --> 00:27:07,639
Speaker 1: He may eat likewise a little veal or fowl, but

427
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:11,840
Speaker 1: it must be moderately. So a lot of people had

428
00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:15,240
Speaker 1: noted fresh fruits and vegetables, including citrus fruits, as a

429
00:27:15,280 --> 00:27:18,680
Speaker 1: treatment for scurvy by the time James Lynde had entered

430
00:27:18,720 --> 00:27:21,600
Speaker 1: the British Royal Navy as a surgeon's mate in seventeen

431
00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:25,680
Speaker 1: thirty nine. He became a full surgeon in seventeen forty six,

432
00:27:25,800 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 1: and he was aboard the HMS Salisbury in seventeen forty

433
00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:32,920
Speaker 1: seven when there was an outbreak of scurvy. Lind did

434
00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:36,480
Speaker 1: an experiment which is sometimes described as the world's first

435
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:40,960
Speaker 1: controlled clinical trial. He selected twelve sailors, all of whom

436
00:27:41,040 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 1: had scurvy that he described as being at a similar

437
00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:47,000
Speaker 1: point of progression, and he paired them up, and he

438
00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:50,040
Speaker 1: gave each pair a different treatment over the course of

439
00:27:50,080 --> 00:27:54,200
Speaker 1: two weeks. These were treatments that already existed for scurvy,

440
00:27:55,600 --> 00:27:59,200
Speaker 1: except for seawater, which was apparently more of a placebo.

441
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:03,160
Speaker 1: Don't drink seawater. It's not a good plan. But these

442
00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:07,480
Speaker 1: these pears were each given a quart of cider per day,

443
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:11,800
Speaker 1: twenty five drops of elixir of vitriol three times a day,

444
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:17,000
Speaker 1: half a pint of seawater a day, a nutmeg sized

445
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:22,080
Speaker 1: paste of garlic, mustard seed, horseradish, balsam of peru and

446
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:26,720
Speaker 1: gum myrr three times a day, two spoonfuls of vinegar

447
00:28:26,800 --> 00:28:31,240
Speaker 1: three times a day, or two oranges and one lemon

448
00:28:31,400 --> 00:28:34,080
Speaker 1: each day. I mean, I might opt for the nutmeg

449
00:28:34,160 --> 00:28:36,399
Speaker 1: sized paste of garlic, but that's just me. I mean,

450
00:28:36,440 --> 00:28:43,120
Speaker 1: it's I kind of do that. Anyway, the men who

451
00:28:43,120 --> 00:28:46,640
Speaker 1: were given cider improved somewhat because of the way cider

452
00:28:46,720 --> 00:28:48,600
Speaker 1: was made at the time, it probably did have some

453
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:51,320
Speaker 1: vitamin C in it. But the two men who got

454
00:28:51,360 --> 00:28:55,200
Speaker 1: oranges and lemons improved so dramatically that they were determined

455
00:28:55,240 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 1: to be well after six days, and from that point

456
00:28:58,280 --> 00:29:01,200
Speaker 1: they actually helped take care of the other. While he

457
00:29:01,320 --> 00:29:05,600
Speaker 1: was writing about this, lend reference to Balduinus Rossius writing

458
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:09,520
Speaker 1: about oranges curing Dutch sailors from like two hundred years before,

459
00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:12,760
Speaker 1: and he said, quote here, indeed is the remarkable and

460
00:29:12,880 --> 00:29:16,920
Speaker 1: authentic proof of the great efficacy of juice of lemons

461
00:29:16,960 --> 00:29:21,000
Speaker 1: against this disease. But these fruits have this particular advantage

462
00:29:21,040 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 1: above any theory that can be prepared for trial that

463
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:27,880
Speaker 1: their experienced virtues have stood the test of near two

464
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:31,920
Speaker 1: hundred years. Lynde left the Navy in seventeen forty eight.

465
00:29:32,560 --> 00:29:35,840
Speaker 1: In seventeen fifty three, he wrote a Treatise of the Scurvy,

466
00:29:36,080 --> 00:29:39,440
Speaker 1: containing an inquiry into the nature, causes, and cure of

467
00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:42,680
Speaker 1: that disease, together with a critical and chronological view of

468
00:29:42,720 --> 00:29:45,760
Speaker 1: what has been published on this subject. And while this

469
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:49,000
Speaker 1: did include the sentence quote oranges and lemons were the

470
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:53,240
Speaker 1: most effectual remedies for this distemperate sea, that was only

471
00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:56,080
Speaker 1: one tiny part of a four hundred page work that

472
00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:58,800
Speaker 1: talked about a lot of other stuff related to scurvy.

473
00:29:59,520 --> 00:30:01,480
Speaker 1: For example, well, he did not think there was a

474
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:05,360
Speaker 1: direct cause and effect relationship between the fruit and the scurvy.

475
00:30:05,880 --> 00:30:08,680
Speaker 1: He actually thought scurvy was a digestive disease that was

476
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:12,160
Speaker 1: caused by blocked sweat glands, and that the fruit and

477
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:16,160
Speaker 1: to a lesser extent, the cider were all clearing those blockages,

478
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:20,600
Speaker 1: and he also thought that other blockage clearing substances could

479
00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:24,680
Speaker 1: potentially have the same effect. Lynde also recognized that you

480
00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:28,640
Speaker 1: cannot really just keep citrus fruits fresh on a ship

481
00:30:28,680 --> 00:30:32,600
Speaker 1: for a lengthy sea voyage, so he recommended concentrating the

482
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:36,320
Speaker 1: juice into a rob, but because of the way that

483
00:30:36,480 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 1: ROB was concentrated, the end result would not have actually

484
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:45,640
Speaker 1: contained much vitamin C at all. I'm I'm thinking of

485
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 1: people who drink orange flavored drink and make jokes about

486
00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:54,240
Speaker 1: not getting scurvy, and I'm like, there's not really much orangeeness. Yeah.

487
00:30:54,560 --> 00:30:58,040
Speaker 1: Over the next decades, other people writing about citrus fruits

488
00:30:58,040 --> 00:31:01,880
Speaker 1: and scurvy attributed their effectiveness to their being a stimulant,

489
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:05,280
Speaker 1: or because they were full of a vital air that

490
00:31:05,440 --> 00:31:09,080
Speaker 1: was leeching out of sailor's bodies at sea. Irish doctor

491
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:13,720
Speaker 1: David McBride tested maltwort, which he believed provided fixed air

492
00:31:13,920 --> 00:31:16,959
Speaker 1: as a scurvy treatment, although his results were clouded by

493
00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:19,520
Speaker 1: the fact that he also gave some of his patients

494
00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:24,560
Speaker 1: citrus fruit. Another person who claimed to conquer scurvy was

495
00:31:24,640 --> 00:31:28,880
Speaker 1: Captain James Cook, and although there were some scurvy outbreaks

496
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:31,960
Speaker 1: on his voyages, there weren't any deaths because of it.

497
00:31:32,760 --> 00:31:37,640
Speaker 1: His preferred scurvy preventatives were portable soup, which was basically

498
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:40,920
Speaker 1: bullyon powder, which I am calling portable soup from now on,

499
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:45,040
Speaker 1: as well as malt and sauerkraut, and of those three

500
00:31:45,360 --> 00:31:49,320
Speaker 1: things only the sauer kraut would have contained much vitamin

501
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:52,280
Speaker 1: C as long as they were eating it raw. He

502
00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:56,000
Speaker 1: also insisted on bringing fresh provisions onto the ship at

503
00:31:56,080 --> 00:31:59,800
Speaker 1: every possible stop, which would have kept them supplied more

504
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:03,120
Speaker 1: fresh fruits and vegetables, and he also insisted on keeping

505
00:32:03,120 --> 00:32:05,960
Speaker 1: the ship really clean, which would have helped slow the

506
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:10,800
Speaker 1: spread of communicable diseases. Finally, after hundreds of years of

507
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:14,960
Speaker 1: various people suggesting that citrus might play some part in

508
00:32:15,040 --> 00:32:18,920
Speaker 1: curing scurvy, in seventeen ninety five, Gilbert Blaine got the

509
00:32:18,920 --> 00:32:22,240
Speaker 1: British Royal Navy to issue lemon juice to every sailor.

510
00:32:23,080 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 1: This work to Britain's advantage during the Napoleonic Wars, and

511
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:30,680
Speaker 1: during the nineteenth century, more and more European explorers and

512
00:32:30,800 --> 00:32:34,440
Speaker 1: naval officials started stressing the need for lemon or lime juice,

513
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:38,680
Speaker 1: or for some kind of fresh vegetables on board. In

514
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty one, William Perry's expedition to the Arctic took

515
00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:46,160
Speaker 1: quote a shallow tray filled with mold on which to

516
00:32:46,240 --> 00:32:49,520
Speaker 1: grow mustard and cress, and their party's only death from

517
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:53,680
Speaker 1: scurvy was an officer who refused to eat them. Sir

518
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:57,120
Speaker 1: John Franklin's expedition in eighteen forty five kept scurvy at

519
00:32:57,160 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 1: bay for twenty seven months with lemon juice, the scurvy

520
00:33:00,600 --> 00:33:04,800
Speaker 1: outbreaks beginning only after that supply of lemon juice ran out.

521
00:33:05,200 --> 00:33:08,160
Speaker 1: For the most part, the British Navy had started out

522
00:33:08,280 --> 00:33:11,880
Speaker 1: using lemon juice made from lemons from the Mediterranean to

523
00:33:11,880 --> 00:33:15,600
Speaker 1: prevent scurvy. In the mid nineteenth century, they instead started

524
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:19,480
Speaker 1: using limes from the Caribbean islands of Monsarrat and Bermuda.

525
00:33:20,320 --> 00:33:23,200
Speaker 1: Part of the rational here was the idea that lime

526
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 1: juice was more acidic and would thus be more effective

527
00:33:26,480 --> 00:33:30,200
Speaker 1: at clearing out purported blackages. Was also because Britain had

528
00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:34,640
Speaker 1: claimed those islands as territories, so there was they could

529
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:37,720
Speaker 1: get things from them that was a free asset to

530
00:33:37,800 --> 00:33:41,280
Speaker 1: them in their minds, to them is the very very

531
00:33:41,320 --> 00:33:45,560
Speaker 1: important part of that phrasing. But scurvy outbreaks kept happening

532
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:50,040
Speaker 1: in other places besides European navies. Scurvy was a problem

533
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:52,920
Speaker 1: during the Great Famine that started in Ireland in eighteen

534
00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:56,960
Speaker 1: forty five, which would later lead people to incorrectly conclude

535
00:33:57,280 --> 00:34:01,800
Speaker 1: that it was connected to potassium deficiency. When pasturization was

536
00:34:01,840 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 1: introduced in the late nineteenth century, there was an outbreak

537
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:08,719
Speaker 1: of scurvy in babies whose families were wealthy enough to

538
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:12,920
Speaker 1: be feeding them pasteurized milk. In the early twentieth century,

539
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:17,640
Speaker 1: researchers at the Lister Institute in London realized that guinea

540
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:21,680
Speaker 1: pigs could develop a condition that seemed identical to scurvy.

541
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:23,560
Speaker 1: As we mentioned up at the top of the show,

542
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:28,080
Speaker 1: guinea pigs also cannot synthesize their own vitamin c axel

543
00:34:28,200 --> 00:34:31,960
Speaker 1: Holst and Theodore Frolick discovered that if the guinea pigs

544
00:34:31,960 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 1: were fed only grains, they became ill, but then if

545
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:37,960
Speaker 1: they were given cabbage or lemon juice, they got better.

546
00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:41,200
Speaker 1: They published their work on this in nineteen oh seven,

547
00:34:41,719 --> 00:34:44,279
Speaker 1: and then five years later in nineteen twelve, was when

548
00:34:44,360 --> 00:34:49,400
Speaker 1: Casimir Funk coined the term vitamin, which later morphed into vitamin.

549
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:52,600
Speaker 1: At this point, the Lister Institute was doing a lot

550
00:34:52,640 --> 00:34:56,600
Speaker 1: of research into nutritional deficiencies, with many of the researchers

551
00:34:56,600 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 1: being women. At the institute, Harriet Chick and Margaret Hume

552
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:05,960
Speaker 1: started identifying more and more foods that had anti scorbutic properties,

553
00:35:06,239 --> 00:35:12,280
Speaker 1: including cabbage, onions, carrots, fruit juices, and potatoes. Alice Henderson

554
00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:16,440
Speaker 1: Smith also researched exactly which fruits had historically been used

555
00:35:16,800 --> 00:35:21,239
Speaker 1: in British navy treatments and their efficacy. By the nineteen twenties,

556
00:35:21,440 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 1: it was clear that scurvy was a deficiency in a

557
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 1: specific nutrient, but nobody had been able to isolate the

558
00:35:29,040 --> 00:35:33,560
Speaker 1: nutrient itself. Then, in nineteen twenty eight, Albert zent Gyorgi

559
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:38,680
Speaker 1: isolated a compound in Paprica that he named hexuronic acid,

560
00:35:38,800 --> 00:35:41,480
Speaker 1: but it was later renamed a sorbic acid because of

561
00:35:41,520 --> 00:35:45,319
Speaker 1: its whole anti scorbutic effect. In nineteen thirty seven, he

562
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:48,680
Speaker 1: was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine quote

563
00:35:48,719 --> 00:35:52,759
Speaker 1: for his discoveries in connection with the biological combustion processes,

564
00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:56,719
Speaker 1: with special reference to vitamin C and the catalysis of

565
00:35:56,880 --> 00:36:00,840
Speaker 1: fumaric acid. Today, it is of course a knowledge that

566
00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:04,759
Speaker 1: vitamin C prevents scurvy, but it can still develop anytime

567
00:36:04,840 --> 00:36:10,000
Speaker 1: people cannot get enough vitamin C. Yeah, it's uh. I

568
00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:13,600
Speaker 1: read lots of articles about various outbreaks and various places

569
00:36:13,640 --> 00:36:17,719
Speaker 1: for everything from like refugee camps where there just are

570
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:21,799
Speaker 1: not adequate provisions, to like fad diets where people have

571
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:26,120
Speaker 1: tried to cut all fruit out of their diet, like

572
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:29,200
Speaker 1: just all over the place. And you know, as we

573
00:36:29,239 --> 00:36:30,719
Speaker 1: said at the top of the show, people who have

574
00:36:31,560 --> 00:36:35,560
Speaker 1: whether it's a physiological condition or a psychological condition, who

575
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:38,800
Speaker 1: either aren't able to eat or aren't able to absorb

576
00:36:38,920 --> 00:36:44,960
Speaker 1: nutrients from their food, Lots of cases still happen today.

577
00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:50,000
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If

578
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 1: you'd like to send us a note, our email addresses

579
00:36:52,320 --> 00:36:56,920
Speaker 1: History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe

580
00:36:56,920 --> 00:37:00,160
Speaker 1: to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

581
00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:08,640
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H m hm