Читать книгу The Little Book of Medical Breakthroughs - Dr. Naomi Craft - Страница 17

Scurvy is due to a lack of dietary vitamin C, which can be found in fresh fruit and vegetables.

Although rare today, scurvy was very common among sailors in the 17th and 18th centuries, many of whom were at sea for months without access to fresh food. Whole crews could be decimated.

One of the worst episodes occurred in the 1740s, when Commodore George Anson (1697–1762) lost 1,300 out of 2,000 sailors on a voyage into the Pacific Ocean, most due to scurvy. Symptoms of scurvy included swollen, spongy, bleeding gums, huge bruises, swollen joints, exhaustion, heart failure and eventually death.

At the time there were many theories about the cause of scurvy, ranging from too much salt in the diet, to bad air and thickened blood. Various remedies were used to treat it, such as the boiled needles of the Eastern White Cedar (later found to contain high quantities of vitamin C), but nobody was certain of the best cure.

In 1734, Johann Bachstrom (1688– 1742), a physician from Leiden in Germany, published a book in which he described scurvy as a disease ‘owing to a total abstinence from fresh vegetable food, and greens’ and recommended fresh fruit and vegetables to treat it. However, it was James Lind (1716–1794) who first proved that scurvy could be treated and prevented by adding citrus fruit to the diet.

Lind was an Edinburgh surgeon serving on HMS Salisbury in 1747, when he carried out his research. He selected 12 men suffering from the disease and divided them into six pairs. He gave each pair a different addition to their basic diet. Some had seawater, others cider, one group had a mixture of garlic, mustard and horseradish. One group was given two oranges and lemons, and this pair made a rapid and complete recovery. He published his findings in 1753 in A Treatise of the Scurvy:

… the most sudden and visible good effects were perceived from the use of the oranges and lemons; one of those who had taken them, being at the end of six days fit for duty. The spots were not indeed at that time quite off his body, nor his gums sound; but without any other medicine … he became quite healthy … The other was the best recovered of any in his condition; and … was appointed nurse to the rest of the sick.

However, Lind didn’t realise that scurvy was due to a lack of vitamin C. He thought that it was caused by moist air, and that the disease occurred because of a blockage in the normal sweating mechanism. In his view, lemon juice worked as a detergent which divided up the toxic particles, so that they could escape through the blocked skin pores.

During the Napoleonic Wars (1799– 1815), it became standard practice for the British Royal Navy to take fresh limes on board to prevent scurvy, which gave rise to the name ‘limey’ for a British sailor.

It wasn’t until over a hundred years later that Vitamin C was finally identified, linking Lind’s earlier discoveries with the deficiency disease.