Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Our recent installment of six Impossible episodes talked
Speaker 1: about Nelly Cashman's efforts to get fresh vegetables to some
Speaker 1: miners who were starving and developing scurvy. I don't remember
Speaker 1: if we mentioned it in that episode, but we do
Speaker 1: have a whole episode on the history of scurvy in
Speaker 1: It's Today's Saturday Classic. It came out on December thirtieth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, and you can tell we were a little
Speaker 1: frazzled after months of relative isolation in that first stretch
Speaker 1: of the COVID nineteen pandemic. We got a couple of
Speaker 1: corrections after this first came out. We talk about the
Speaker 1: genetic mutation that kept our long ago ancestors from being
Speaker 1: able to produce their own vitamin C, but that wasn't
Speaker 1: a big issue because overwhelmingly they were living in tropical
Speaker 1: areas and eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. We
Speaker 1: say that had they not been eating lots of foods
Speaker 1: that were rich in vitamin C, they would have died out.
Speaker 1: One letter writer noted that only the people carrying the
Speaker 1: mutation would have died out. Everybody else would have been fine.
Speaker 1: Another correction from another listener pointed out that we did
Speaker 1: not explain that heat breaks down vitamin C. We talked
Speaker 1: about vitamin C being destroyed by cooking and by pasteurization
Speaker 1: and by concentrating juice down into a rob which is
Speaker 1: done by boiling. So heat is the common element among
Speaker 1: all those things. And the last is that we read
Speaker 1: the full title of the reference book, The Surgeon's Mate,
Speaker 1: which was full of the word yee spelled ye. This
Speaker 1: correction noted that the why there was in place of
Speaker 1: the character thorn, which would be pronounced th which is true,
Speaker 1: but would not have been nearly as funny. So enjoy.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy P.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. This episode is the last
Speaker 1: episode I am for the year twenty twenty. It's been
Speaker 1: a year. Hooray, yeah, hooray. Also, I'm just I've had
Speaker 1: minimal contact with anybody besides my spouse in almost nine months,
Speaker 1: and for some reason, my brain keeps being like scurvy.
Speaker 1: And that connection doesn't make sense really, because if I
Speaker 1: were to get a vitamin deficiency because of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: it would probably be about vitamin D from the not
Speaker 1: going out into the sun. Is that what you're saying
Speaker 1: is that your brain is making a weird jump of
Speaker 1: concern of vitamin deficiency. Maybe not concern, but maybe more
Speaker 1: like at least I don't have scurvy, like huh, but brain,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make any sense anyway. That's what we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about today, is scurvy because just for some
Speaker 1: weird reason, my brain keeps coming back around to it
Speaker 1: in these times of winter and pandemic. So skirv in
Speaker 1: case you don't know, and you probably do, is a
Speaker 1: deficiency in vitamin C or a sorbic acid, and its
Speaker 1: story goes way way back in history, all the way
Speaker 1: to our evolutionary ancestors living more than sixty million years ago.
Speaker 1: With a few exceptions including guinea pigs and bats. Most
Speaker 1: mammals can generate their own acorbic acid, and that included
Speaker 1: those primate ancestors. But somewhere along the way, a random
Speaker 1: genetic mutation broke the ability to produce an enzyme known
Speaker 1: as L glunolactone oxidase or GULO, which is a necessary
Speaker 1: part of making a sorbic acid. Acorbic acid is also
Speaker 1: necessary the body uses it to synthesize the protein collagen,
Speaker 1: and collagen is a crucially important part of our connective tissue.
Speaker 1: We need it to do really important things like hold
Speaker 1: our skin and blood vessels together. So if the body
Speaker 1: cannot replace worn out collagen, it causes serious problems. The
Speaker 1: first symptoms of scurvy involve fatigu lethargy, and aching joints.
Speaker 1: People start to bruise easily, wounds won't heal, and old
Speaker 1: wounds reopen. The gums start to bleed, and the teeth
Speaker 1: start to loosen and can in fact come out entirely.
Speaker 1: This is also accompanied by foul odors, including very bad breath.
Speaker 1: Without treatment with vitamin C, scurvy is eventually fatal, often
Speaker 1: because of acute internal bleeding around the brain or heart.
Speaker 1: But when our ancestors stopped being able to produce guloh,
Speaker 1: this really did not matter. They were living in tropical
Speaker 1: areas and their diets included lots of fresh fruits and vegetables,
Speaker 1: so they were getting plenty of vitamin C through their food.
Speaker 1: If this had not been true, this genetic mutation that
Speaker 1: shut off the ability to synthesize guloh would have wiped
Speaker 1: them out, but since their diets were rich with vitamin C,
Speaker 1: they continued to thrive. As people started living farther from
Speaker 1: tropical areas, they started eating more foods that did not
Speaker 1: necessarily contain as much vitamin CEA, but most of the
Speaker 1: time this was still not a big problem. Most dietary
Speaker 1: recommendations call for significantly more vitamin C, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: actually take that much just to prevent scurvy. Only about
Speaker 1: ten milligrams a day are all you need, and although
Speaker 1: vitamin C is mostly associated with fruits and vegetables, it
Speaker 1: is found in other foods as well. Most meat contains
Speaker 1: a little if it hasn't been cooked too long, and
Speaker 1: liver and kidney meat in particular contained quite a bit
Speaker 1: of it. So, as one example, the practice of eating
Speaker 1: raw organ meat in far northern indigenous communities provides protection
Speaker 1: from scurvy even when plant based foods are unavailable or
Speaker 1: out of season. So as communities established themselves around the world,
Speaker 1: people had to have some kind of vitamin C in
Speaker 1: their diets, otherwise that community just could not survive. But
Speaker 1: anytime that access to food was cut off in some way,
Speaker 1: say because of a war or a famine, people could
Speaker 1: start to develop scurvy. And this was also true for
Speaker 1: people with diseases and conditions that kept them from eating
Speaker 1: or kept them from absorbing the nutrients and their food.
Speaker 1: And the 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 fifteen hundred BCE.
Speaker 1: Past podcast subject Shushruda described a condition involving bleeding gums
Speaker 1: and loosening teeth around eight hundred BCE. Roughly four hundred
Speaker 1: 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 Ditional Chinese medicine
Speaker 1: texts describe 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 they
Speaker 1: island topped, and that gave them plenty of opportunities to
Speaker 1: stock up on fresh food. But as 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 SEA, 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 this 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 a
Speaker 1: about the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. But of course
Speaker 1: Europeans were not the only people taking to the sea
Speaker 1: at this point. It's possible that other nations aren't as
Speaker 1: represented 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 CEA 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 Sea.
Speaker 1: Past podcast subject Ibin 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, lemon, 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 tea does
Speaker 1: contain some vitamin C. For the most part, written records
Speaker 1: of scurvy on Chinese vessels 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 among 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 pause 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 one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy crew during Vasco de Gama's voyage to the Indian
Speaker 1: subcontinent that started in fourteen ninety seven. For Nan Magellan
Speaker 1: left Spain with a fleet of five ships in fifteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: searching for a way to reach Asia from Europe by
Speaker 1: traveling west by sea. Only eighteen of his original crew
Speaker 1: of two hundred and seventy made it back to Spain
Speaker 1: in fifteen twenty two, with scurvy being a major cause
Speaker 1: of death. Here is how one of Magellan's crew described
Speaker 1: conditions in his journal quote, we ate only old biscuit,
Speaker 1: reduced to powder and full of grubs and stinking from
Speaker 1: the dirt which the rats had made on it when
Speaker 1: eating the good biscuit, and we drank water that was
Speaker 1: yellow and stinking. The men were so hungry that if
Speaker 1: any of them caught a rat, he could sell it
Speaker 1: for a high price to someone who would eat it.
Speaker 1: In fifteen thirty five, French explorer Jacques Cartier established a
Speaker 1: fort across the Saint Charles River from the Iroquoisan village
Speaker 1: of Stadacona that's near what's now Quebec City. That winter
Speaker 1: was extremely harsh. Cardier's ships became ice bound. They were
Speaker 1: not able to return to France's planned and when they
Speaker 1: heard of an illness that was spreading through the indigenous population,
Speaker 1: they tried to cut off contact with them, but then
Speaker 1: that same illness started to spread through Cardier's own men.
Speaker 1: In an account translated by Richard Hacklett, it's described as
Speaker 1: this quote. Some did lose their strength and could not
Speaker 1: stand on their feet. Then did their legs swell. Their
Speaker 1: sinnow's shrink as black as any coal. Others also had
Speaker 1: all their skins spotted with spots of blood of a
Speaker 1: purple color. Then did ascend up to their ankles, knees, thighs, shoulders, arms,
Speaker 1: and neck. Their mouth became stinking, their gums so rotten
Speaker 1: that all the flesh did fall off, even to the
Speaker 1: roots of the teeth, which also all fall out. About
Speaker 1: the middle of February, of one hundredth and ten persons
Speaker 1: that we were there were not ten whole. There were
Speaker 1: already eight dead, and more than fifty six. And as
Speaker 1: we saw it, passed all hope of recovery, so at
Speaker 1: some point Cardier went for a walk and encountered Domagaya,
Speaker 1: who was the son of Doncona, who was the chief
Speaker 1: of Stadacona. Domagaya told 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 contain some vitamincy but have a whole
Speaker 1: lot more of it in the new growth that comes
Speaker 1: out in the early spring. Although at least twenty five
Speaker 1: men in the fort died of scurvy, this cure was
Speaker 1: effective for the ones who survived. There is a court,
Speaker 1: of course, a whole lot more to this story outside
Speaker 1: the part about scurvy. Cardier had actually abducted Domagaia 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, Cardier 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 fifteen forty one.
Speaker 1: Probably the most dramatic and notorious outbreak of scurvy at
Speaker 1: sea was during George Anson's four year voyage around the world,
Speaker 1: which started in seventeen forty. Britain was at war with Spain,
Speaker 1: and 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
Speaker 1: any vitamin C, so they did not actually work for
Speaker 1: the most part. They were also really unpleasant, like drinking
Speaker 1: a 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 high hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty five survivors out of about thirteen hundred original crew.
Speaker 1: Finally they reached the Wan Fernandez Islands off the coast
Speaker 1: of Chile. These were home to plenty of fresh fruits
Speaker 1: and vegetables, and as the ships took on fresh provisions
Speaker 1: and the men ate these foods, they gradually began to recover.
Speaker 1: But because their conditions were so dire, when they started
Speaker 1: getting more vitamin C into their bodies, it actually took
Speaker 1: more than a month before men stopped dying of scurvy.
Speaker 1: Anson's dwindling fleet was struck by scurvy again in the
Speaker 1: Pacific Ocean in the summer of seventeen forty two, so
Speaker 1: obviously after they had run out of the fresh provisions
Speaker 1: that they brought on board. When his two remaining ships
Speaker 1: finally got to China, there were only two hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty seven of the original crew still living. In spite
Speaker 1: of that, they managed to capture a Spanish galleon that
Speaker 1: was bound for Manila on June twentieth of seventeen forty three,
Speaker 1: and then with a holy one hundred and forty five
Speaker 1: five of the original men, they made it back to Britain.
Speaker 1: Because they had captured the Spanish galleon, they were treated
Speaker 1: as heroes, with treasures from the galleon paraded through the
Speaker 1: streets of London, and Anson named first Lord of the
Speaker 1: Admiralty in seventeen fifty one. At this point, I mean,
Speaker 1: it might seem a little weird for the person who
Speaker 1: was in charge when all of these people died to
Speaker 1: then become the first Lord of the Admiralty. But at
Speaker 1: this point European naval officials had long seen scurvy as
Speaker 1: an almost inevitable side effect of sending men out to
Speaker 1: sea for long periods, and they really did not know
Speaker 1: what was going on with this disease. They did not
Speaker 1: know about vitamin C, or about vitamins at all. It
Speaker 1: would be more than one hundred and fifty more years
Speaker 1: before Casimir Funk would coin the word vitamin to describe
Speaker 1: specific chemical substances that the body needed to survive. They
Speaker 1: did not know about collagen either. The molecular structure of
Speaker 1: collagen was not discovered until the Night teaen thirties. Complicating
Speaker 1: all of this, diets that lacked vitamin C often lacked
Speaker 1: other essential nutrients as well, and outbreaks of scurvy frequently
Speaker 1: happened alongside outbreaks of contagious diseases, so it wasn't always
Speaker 1: clear exactly what disease was at work, and often multiple
Speaker 1: conditions were getting lumped together and described as scurvy. So
Speaker 1: over the centuries, various people noticed that an assortment of
Speaker 1: foods seemed to cure scurvy. Sometimes they did put that
Speaker 1: discovery in writing, but it took a really long time
Speaker 1: before navies started consistently keeping effective treatments for it on ships.
Speaker 1: This was not just a matter of people forgetting that
Speaker 1: citrus fruits cured scurvy, though it is definitely described that
Speaker 1: way sometimes like people kind of frame it as people
Speaker 1: in the past were great, big dummies who just kept
Speaker 1: forgetting that all they needed was oranges. In hindsight, it
Speaker 1: is really easy to see that the things that treated
Speaker 1: scurvy effectively all have vitamin C in them. But at
Speaker 1: the time, not only did people not know why any
Speaker 1: of those things actually worked, but their explanations for why
Speaker 1: they worked were totally off base. So as people tried
Speaker 1: to come up with cures that were easier to keep
Speaker 1: fresh on ships than fruits and vegetables are, it just
Speaker 1: kept going down the completely wrong track. Often James Lynde
Speaker 1: is the one who gets credit for solving this scurvy problem,
Speaker 1: but it's of course history, so that means it's way
Speaker 1: more complicated than that, And we're going to get into
Speaker 1: all of that after we pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: For hundreds of years, medicine in Europe rested on the
Speaker 1: idea of humors, and this drew from Greek physicians and
Speaker 1: philosophers like Galen and Hippocrates. It also appears in the
Speaker 1: work of Persian polymath Ebn Sina. Similar concepts are part
Speaker 1: of traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda as well, and in
Speaker 1: terms of the understanding of scurvy and much of Europe.
Speaker 1: For hundreds of years it was believed to be due
Speaker 1: to putrefaction of the humors, and then that puture faction
Speaker 1: was made worse by bad food, bad air, bad hygiene,
Speaker 1: or sometimes just laziness, and there were a lot of
Speaker 1: people who figured out something that worked to treat this.
Speaker 1: In fifteen seventy four, Balduinus Roncius wrote about oranges curing
Speaker 1: scurvy in Dutch sailors. In the late sixteenth century, Enrich
Speaker 1: Euer wrote about cloudberry's treating scurvy in Norse sailors. In
Speaker 1: sixteen seventeen, John Woodall published a reference book called The
Speaker 1: Surgeon's Mate, or Military and Domestique Surgery Discovering Faithfully and
Speaker 1: plainly YE method. An order of ye Surgeon's chest, Ye
Speaker 1: uses of the instruments, the virtues and operations of YE medicines,
Speaker 1: with the exact cures of wounds made by gunshot and
Speaker 1: otherwise as namely wounds, appost fumes, ulcers, fistulas, fractures, dislocations
Speaker 1: with the most easy and safest ways of amputation or dismembering.
Speaker 1: The cures of the scurvy of Ye, fluxes of you,
Speaker 1: belly of ucolic and Iliaca Passio of Tenasimus and exotus Ana,
Speaker 1: and of the calend Tour with a Treatise of Ye
Speaker 1: Cure of ye Plague, published for the service of His
Speaker 1: Master and of the Commonwealth by John Woodhall, mister in surgery.
Speaker 1: As that very long title mentioned, it had an entire
Speaker 1: section on scurvy and its treatment. I think we should
Speaker 1: bring back the days where we basically include the index
Speaker 1: in the title. Yeah. Well, I looked at the table
Speaker 1: of contents for it, and at one point I had
Speaker 1: the table of contents for what the section on scurvy
Speaker 1: included in here, But it was really like scurvy, it's description,
Speaker 1: it's treatment. Yeah. What All's descriptions of scurvy are similar
Speaker 1: to what we talked about earlier in the show. And
Speaker 1: as for its cure, he wrote that quote as a
Speaker 1: famous writer named Johannes Ekteus in a treatise Discorbuto a
Speaker 1: Firmus consisted chiefly in four things, namely in opening obstructions,
Speaker 1: evacuating the offending humors, in altering the property of them,
Speaker 1: and in comforting and corroborating the parts late diseased. What
Speaker 1: All stresses the need to keep the cruise quarters clean
Speaker 1: and sweet, with as much high quality, comfortable food as possible.
Speaker 1: But if someone does get scurvy, they should be bled
Speaker 1: and given some quote pills of euphorbium or otherwise pibula
Speaker 1: ruffy or cambosia. And then after that some spoon meat
Speaker 1: or some oatmeal or egg yolk, or a broth of
Speaker 1: currants and other fruit, or some sugar or spices, or
Speaker 1: some barley water, or some oil of vitrey which is
Speaker 1: sulfuric acid, or putting some dried wormwood in the patient's drink.
Speaker 1: And then quote further, the surgeon or his mate must
Speaker 1: not fail to persuade the governor or purser in all
Speaker 1: places where they touched in the Indies, and may have
Speaker 1: it to provide themselves of juice of oranges, limes or lemons,
Speaker 1: and at bantham of tamarinds. In the surgeon's mate. Woodall
Speaker 1: makes lots of references to citrus fruit, but he's really
Speaker 1: focused on when cruiser in places where those fruits grow,
Speaker 1: because quote, the sea surgeon shall do little good at
Speaker 1: sea with them, neither will they endure. Yeah, he had
Speaker 1: stuff about citrus fruit in here, but it was really
Speaker 1: about when they were on land. And he also included
Speaker 1: so many other things that would not have been effective
Speaker 1: at all. Oil of vitriol was a very common scurvy treatment.
Speaker 1: It was literally sulfuric acid 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: sixteen thirty five, Ambrosius Rhodius defended and published the first
Speaker 1: Scandinavian doctoral thesis, and it was on scurvy. It described
Speaker 1: treating scurvy with scurvy grass, common chickweed, watercress, mustard plants,
Speaker 1: and the cloud berries that we mentioned earlier on in
Speaker 1: the show. Ambrosius Roodius 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. Sure. 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 Bachscham used the term to describe fresh fruits
Speaker 1: and vegetables in seventeen thirty four. Also in the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: Baron Gehard von Sweeden talked about scarcity of greens and
Speaker 1: vegetables as contributing to scurvy, but he also attributed it
Speaker 1: to quote noisome vapors arising from marshy grounds and stagnating waters,
Speaker 1: in action, drinking of corrupted and stagnating waters, the use
Speaker 1: of salted and smoked flesh and fish, damp and low lodgings,
Speaker 1: as well as sorrow, nostalgia and homesickness. According to von Sweeten,
Speaker 1: treatment for scurvy involved quote, correcting the impure waters and
Speaker 1: also purging. He also made dietary recommendations quote the food
Speaker 1: should be broth with shrvil sorrel, spinach, lettuce, hodie, suckery, cabbage,
Speaker 1: especially red cabbage, young nettle, buds and tops, or any
Speaker 1: other sort of tender herbage boiled in it. The preference
Speaker 1: to be given to those easiest to come at. Fruit
Speaker 1: quite ripe used moderately always produces a good effect. But
Speaker 1: if neither fruit nor greens can be pre cured, the
Speaker 1: patient must have his broth with barley oats or rice.
Speaker 1: He may eat likewise a little veal or fowl, but
Speaker 1: it must be moderately. So a lot of people had
Speaker 1: noted fresh fruits and vegetables, including citrus fruits, as a
Speaker 1: treatment for scurvy by the time James Lynde had entered
Speaker 1: the British Royal Navy as a surgeon's mate in seventeen
Speaker 1: thirty nine. He became a full surgeon in seventeen forty six,
Speaker 1: and he was aboard the HMS Salisbury in seventeen forty
Speaker 1: seven when there was an outbreak of scurvy. Lind did
Speaker 1: an experiment which is sometimes described as the world's first
Speaker 1: controlled clinical trial. He selected twelve sailors, all of whom
Speaker 1: had scurvy that he described as being at a similar
Speaker 1: point of progression, and he paired them up, and he
Speaker 1: gave each pair a different treatment over the course of
Speaker 1: two weeks. These were treatments that already existed for scurvy,
Speaker 1: except for seawater, which was apparently more of a placebo.
Speaker 1: Don't drink seawater. It's not a good plan. But these
Speaker 1: these pears were each given a quart of cider per day,
Speaker 1: twenty five drops of elixir of vitriol three times a day,
Speaker 1: half a pint of seawater a day, a nutmeg sized
Speaker 1: paste of garlic, mustard seed, horseradish, balsam of peru and
Speaker 1: gum myrr three times a day, two spoonfuls of vinegar
Speaker 1: three times a day, or two oranges and one lemon
Speaker 1: each day. I mean, I might opt for the nutmeg
Speaker 1: sized paste of garlic, but that's just me. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's I kind of do that. Anyway, the men who
Speaker 1: were given cider improved somewhat because of the way cider
Speaker 1: was made at the time, it probably did have some
Speaker 1: vitamin C in it. But the two men who got
Speaker 1: oranges and lemons improved so dramatically that they were determined
Speaker 1: to be well after six days, and from that point
Speaker 1: they actually helped take care of the other. While he
Speaker 1: was writing about this, lend reference to Balduinus Rossius writing
Speaker 1: about oranges curing Dutch sailors from like two hundred years before,
Speaker 1: and he said, quote here, indeed is the remarkable and
Speaker 1: authentic proof of the great efficacy of juice of lemons
Speaker 1: against this disease. But these fruits have this particular advantage
Speaker 1: above any theory that can be prepared for trial that
Speaker 1: their experienced virtues have stood the test of near two
Speaker 1: hundred years. Lynde left the Navy in seventeen forty eight.
Speaker 1: In seventeen fifty three, he wrote a Treatise of the Scurvy,
Speaker 1: containing an inquiry into the nature, causes, and cure of
Speaker 1: that disease, together with a critical and chronological view of
Speaker 1: what has been published on this subject. And while this
Speaker 1: did include the sentence quote oranges and lemons were the
Speaker 1: most effectual remedies for this distemperate sea, that was only
Speaker 1: one tiny part of a four hundred page work that
Speaker 1: talked about a lot of other stuff related to scurvy.
Speaker 1: For example, well, he did not think there was a
Speaker 1: direct cause and effect relationship between the fruit and the scurvy.
Speaker 1: He actually thought scurvy was a digestive disease that was
Speaker 1: caused by blocked sweat glands, and that the fruit and
Speaker 1: to a lesser extent, the cider were all clearing those blockages,
Speaker 1: and he also thought that other blockage clearing substances could
Speaker 1: potentially have the same effect. Lynde also recognized that you
Speaker 1: cannot really just keep citrus fruits fresh on a ship
Speaker 1: for a lengthy sea voyage, so he recommended concentrating the
Speaker 1: juice into a rob, but because of the way that
Speaker 1: ROB was concentrated, the end result would not have actually
Speaker 1: contained much vitamin C at all. I'm I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: people who drink orange flavored drink and make jokes about
Speaker 1: not getting scurvy, and I'm like, there's not really much orangeeness. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Over the next decades, other people writing about citrus fruits
Speaker 1: and scurvy attributed their effectiveness to their being a stimulant,
Speaker 1: or because they were full of a vital air that
Speaker 1: was leeching out of sailor's bodies at sea. Irish doctor
Speaker 1: David McBride tested maltwort, which he believed provided fixed air
Speaker 1: as a scurvy treatment, although his results were clouded by
Speaker 1: the fact that he also gave some of his patients
Speaker 1: citrus fruit. Another person who claimed to conquer scurvy was
Speaker 1: Captain James Cook, and although there were some scurvy outbreaks
Speaker 1: on his voyages, there weren't any deaths because of it.
Speaker 1: His preferred scurvy preventatives were portable soup, which was basically
Speaker 1: bullyon powder, which I am calling portable soup from now on,
Speaker 1: as well as malt and sauerkraut, and of those three
Speaker 1: things only the sauer kraut would have contained much vitamin
Speaker 1: C as long as they were eating it raw. He
Speaker 1: also insisted on bringing fresh provisions onto the ship at
Speaker 1: every possible stop, which would have kept them supplied more
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 seventeen ninety five, Gilbert Blaine got the
Speaker 1: British Royal Navy to issue lemon juice to every sailor.
Speaker 1: This work to Britain's advantage during the Napoleonic Wars, and
Speaker 1: during the nineteenth century, more and more European explorers and
Speaker 1: naval officials started stressing the need for lemon or lime juice,
Speaker 1: or for some kind of fresh vegetables on board. In
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty one, William Perry's expedition to the Arctic took
Speaker 1: quote a shallow tray filled with mold on which to
Speaker 1: grow mustard and cress, and their party's only death from
Speaker 1: scurvy was an officer who refused to eat them. Sir
Speaker 1: John Franklin's expedition in eighteen forty five kept scurvy at
Speaker 1: bay for twenty seven months with lemon juice, the scurvy
Speaker 1: outbreaks beginning only after that supply of lemon juice ran out.
Speaker 1: For the most part, the British Navy had started out
Speaker 1: using lemon juice made from lemons from the Mediterranean to
Speaker 1: prevent scurvy. In the mid nineteenth century, they instead started
Speaker 1: using limes from the Caribbean islands of Monsarrat and Bermuda.
Speaker 1: Part of the rational here was the idea that lime
Speaker 1: juice was more acidic and would thus be more effective
Speaker 1: at clearing out purported blackages. Was also because Britain had
Speaker 1: claimed those islands as territories, so there was they could
Speaker 1: get things from them that was a free asset to
Speaker 1: them in their minds, to them is the very very
Speaker 1: important part of that phrasing. But scurvy outbreaks kept happening
Speaker 1: in other places besides European navies. Scurvy was a problem
Speaker 1: during the Great Famine that started in Ireland in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty five, which would later lead people to incorrectly conclude
Speaker 1: that it was connected to potassium deficiency. When pasturization was
Speaker 1: introduced in the late nineteenth century, there was an outbreak
Speaker 1: of scurvy in babies whose families were wealthy enough to
Speaker 1: be feeding them pasteurized milk. In the early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: researchers at the Lister Institute in London realized that guinea
Speaker 1: pigs could develop a condition that seemed identical to scurvy.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned up at the top of the show,
Speaker 1: guinea pigs also cannot synthesize their own vitamin c axel
Speaker 1: Holst and Theodore Frolick discovered that if the guinea pigs
Speaker 1: were fed only grains, they became ill, but then if
Speaker 1: they were given cabbage or lemon juice, they got better.
Speaker 1: They published their work on this in nineteen oh seven,
Speaker 1: and then five years later in nineteen twelve, was when
Speaker 1: Casimir Funk coined the term vitamin, 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 scorbutic properties,
Speaker 1: including cabbage, onions, carrots, fruit juices, and potatoes. Alice Henderson
Speaker 1: Smith also researched exactly which fruits had historically been used
Speaker 1: in British navy treatments and their efficacy. By the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: it was clear that scurvy was a deficiency in a
Speaker 1: specific nutrient, but nobody had been able to isolate the
Speaker 1: nutrient itself. Then, in nineteen twenty eight, Albert zent Gyorgi
Speaker 1: isolated a compound in Paprica that he named hexuronic acid,
Speaker 1: but it was later renamed a sorbic acid because of
Speaker 1: its whole anti scorbutic effect. In nineteen thirty 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 a knowledge that
Speaker 1: vitamin C prevents scurvy, but it can still develop anytime
Speaker 1: people cannot get enough vitamin C. Yeah, it's uh. I
Speaker 1: read lots of articles about various outbreaks and various places
Speaker 1: for everything from like refugee camps where there just are
Speaker 1: not adequate provisions, to like fad diets where people have
Speaker 1: tried to cut all fruit out of their diet, like
Speaker 1: just all over the place. And you know, as we
Speaker 1: said at the top of the show, people who have
Speaker 1: whether it's a physiological condition or a psychological condition, who
Speaker 1: either aren't able to eat or aren't able to absorb
Speaker 1: nutrients from their food, Lots of cases still happen today.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to send us a note, our email addresses
Speaker 1: History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe
Speaker 1: to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H m hm