Hundreds of years, deaths before scurvy cure found
It was a scourge during the Age of Sail (1490-1850); initially the victim suffered bouts of sudden fatigue and aching bones.
After a few weeks, gums became badly swollen, putrid and bled. Within two months the flesh was gangrenous, haemorrhaged and the pain in the joints and bones had become excruciating.
Death followed when one or more of the vital organs began to haemorrhage. These were the symptoms of scurvy.
Scurvy had been around for thousands of years however it really came to the fore when international trade and naval warfare was dominated by sailing ships.
In 1497 when the Portuguese adventurer Vasco da Gama (1469-1524) became the first European to reach India by sea, he recorded the symptoms of ‘‘sea scurvy’’.
His suggestion for a cure was to ‘‘wash your mouth with your own urine’’. The reaction of the Indians to the sight and smell of the scurvy-ridden crew with their putrid, bleeding, urine soaked gums, isn’t recorded. Vasco da Gama’s cure didn’t work; of the 160 crew, 100 died.
Many other sea voyages suffered similar fates and virtually nothing was done until after the global circumnavigation voyage of Commodore George Anson. In
1740, during the British/Spanish war, Anson set out for South America with a fleet of eight ships to disrupt Spanish galleons. Of the
1,854 crew, 188 returned. Seventy per cent of the deaths were due to scurvy. The Admiralty realised that on the grounds of national security, let alone for humanitarian reasons, something had to be done.
It wasn’t until 1746 that James Lind, surgeon on HMS Salisbury decided to conduct one of the world’s first clinical trials.
Selecting 12 men with advanced scurvy, each man was fed the same diet, but Lind divided the men into six groups of two, each group received different daily supplements to their diet.
Two were given cider, two vitriol (sulphuric acid), two had to drink seawater, two received vinegar, two took barley water and two ate one lemon and two oranges per day.
After six days the improvement in the citrus fruit eating sailors was dramatic.
Lind also noted that the cider drinkers showed a marked improvement. It took Lind a full seven years to publish the results in ‘‘A Treatise on Scurvy’’.
Incredibly, the Admiralty did nothing for a further 40 years. The reasons appear to be that Lind’s low status meant his treatise didn’t receive the profile it deserved.
Decisive and prompt action was not helped by Lind who was convinced scurvy had multiple causes.
Captains such as James Cook experimented with various diets to combat scurvy, including sauerkraut, and although some of the sailors did contract scurvy on his ships, none died. However, it was a hit and miss affair and scientific ignorance prevailed.
In 1795 an enlightened Rear Admiral, Alan Gardner, issued lemon juice on board the HMS Suffolk during its 23-week voyage to India. No serious outbreaks of scurvy were recorded.
However, it wasn’t until 1800 that an edict was issued requiring each ship in the Navy be provisioned with lime and lemon juice - hence the source of the nickname ‘‘Limey’’ for British people.
Modern science has established that vitamin C, found in citrus fruits and some other foods, is key to the prevention of scurvy.
The ignorance surrounding citrus fruit and scurvy was in part due to the fact that vitamins were unknown until 1912. Vitamin C is a key agent in the formation of collagen, the main structural component in the connective tissues – collagen holds the body together.
Most animals can synthesise vitamin C but humans cannot which means our vitamin C can only be obtained through diet. Vitamin C was chemically isolated for the first time in 1928.
The lack of understanding of the chemistry and the role of vitamin C, meant that long after the value of citrus fruits was realised, the idea prevailed that scurvy was the result of a problem in the digestive system.
Even as late as Scott’s first Antarctic expedition (1901-1904) it was thought that chemicals in decaying tinned meat were responsible for scurvy.
It is a sobering fact that during the Age of Sail far more lives were lost to scurvy than all other diseases, shipwrecks and wars combined.