December 30, 2020 • 39 mins
Scurvy is a deficiency in vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, and its story goes way back in history – all the way to our evolutionary ancestors living more than 60 million years ago.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy fee Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. This episode
is the last episode I am writing for the year.
(00:22):
It's been a year. Hooray, Yeah, hooray. Also, I've just
I've had minimal contact with anybody besides my spouse in
almost nine months, and for some reason, my brain keeps
being like scurvy and that connection doesn't make sense really,
because if I were to get a vitamin deficiency because
(00:45):
of the pandemic, it would probably be about vitamin D
from the not going out into the sun. Is that
what you're saying is that your brain is making a
weird jump of concern of vitamin deficiency. Maybe not concerned,
but maybe more like at least they don't have scurvy,
like huh, But brain, that doesn't make any sense anyway.
(01:07):
That's what we're going to talk about today, is scurvy
because just for some weird reason, my brain keeps coming
back around to it in these times of winter and pandemic.
So scurvy, in case you don't know, and you probably do,
is a deficiency in vitamin c or asorbic acid, and
its story goes way way back in history, all the
(01:28):
way to our evolutionary ancestors living more than sixty million
years ago, and with a few exceptions including guinea pigs
and bats, most mammals can generate their own asorbic acid,
and that included those primate ancestors. But somewhere along the way,
a random genetic mutation broke the ability to produce an
(01:48):
enzyme known as l galuno lactone oxidase or GULO, which
is a necessary part of making a sorbic acid. A
sorbic acid is also necessary the body uses it to
send the size the protein collagen, and collagen is a
crucially important part of our connective tissue. We needed to
do really important things like hold our skin and blood
(02:10):
vessels together. So if the body cannot replace worn out collagen,
it causes serious problems. The first symptoms of scurvy involve fatigue, lethargy,
and aching joints. People start to bruise easily, wounds won't heal,
and old wounds reopen. The gums start to bleed, and
the teeth start to loosen and can in fact come
(02:32):
out entirely. This is also accompanied by foul odors, including
very bad breath. Without treatment with vitamin C, scurvy is
eventually fatal, often because of acute internal bleeding around the
brain or heart. But when our ancestors stopped being able
to produce gulo, this really did not matter. They were
(02:54):
living in tropical areas and their diets included lots of
fresh fruits and vegetables, so they were getting ncy of
vitamin C through their food. If this had not been
through this genetic mutation that shut off the ability to
synthesize ghulu would have wiped them out, but since their
diets were rich with vitamin C, they continued to thrive.
As people started living farther from tropical areas, they started
(03:17):
eating more foods that did not necessarily contain as much
vitamin C, but most of the time this was still
not a big problem. Most dietary recommendations call for significantly
more vitamin C, but it doesn't actually take that much
just to prevent scurvy, only about ten milligrams a day
or all you need, and although vitamin C is mostly
associated with fruits and vegetables, it is found in other
(03:40):
foods as well. Most meat contains a little if it
hasn't been cooked too long, and liver and kidney meat
in particular contained quite a bit of it. So, as
one example, the practice of eating raw organ meat in
far northern indigenous communities provides protection from scurvy even when
plant based foods are unavailable or out of season. So
(04:01):
as communities established themselves around the world, people had to
have some kind of vitamin C in their diets, otherwise
that community just could not survive. But anytime that access
to food was cut off in some way, say because
of a war or a famine, people could start to
develop scurvy. And this was also true for people with
(04:22):
diseases and conditions that kept them from eating or kept
them from absorbing the nutrients and their food. And the
word scurvy comes from older terms that mean lazy, scabbed,
or scurf, which used to be used to describe dandruff.
People started using it to describe this disease in about
the sixteenth century, but written descriptions of scurvy that predate
(04:45):
that word are much older. The earliest likely description of
scurvy is found in the Egyptian document known as the
Ebers Papyrus, which dates back to about fift b c E.
Past podcast subject for Shrewda described a condition involving leading
gums and loosening teeth around eight hundred BC. Roughly four
hundred years later, Greek physician Hippocrates described what was probably scurvy,
(05:10):
and while he did not go into detail about the
cure he knew for it, he did note that it
wasn't effective and that patients usually died. Traditional Chinese medicine
texts described collections of symptoms that very much resemble scurvy
as well. So today scurvy is associated with long sea
voyages and his humanity took to the sea. People worked
(05:33):
out some ways to prevent it, although really without necessarily
knowing that that was what they were doing. Many of
the earliest seafarers stuck close to the coasts or the
island hopped, and that gave them plenty of opportunities to
stock up on fresh food. But his voyages got longer,
many also had foods on board that were rich in
(05:53):
vitamin C. It's possible that Polynesian wayfinders introduced sweet potatoes
to Central and South America. They would have brought them
with them over thousands of miles of ocean and sweet
potatoes contained vitamin C. Scandinavians stocked their ships with cloud berries,
which have about four times as much vitamin C as
(06:15):
oranges do. Unpasteurized milk also contains vitamin C, so seafarers
who had dairy animals on board could get it that way.
While scurvy was common enough to be documented in ancient
medical literature, one of the first specifically documented outbreaks happened
in the thirteenth century during the Eighth Crusade, King Louis
(06:36):
the ninth lay siege to Tunis. Although there were plenty
of fresh fruits and vegetables available in the area, the
king and his fighting force were mostly eating fish, and
many were also undertaking religious fasts. The king and about
a sixth of his men died of disease during the siege.
For a long time, their deaths were attributed to plague,
(06:56):
but more recent research has found evidence of scurvy in
the king's jawbone. Not long after this, scurvy started to
become a serious problem on European ships during long sea voyages,
and most of the literature that's related to scurvy in
history today is focused primarily on Europe and its colonies,
(07:17):
mostly during the Age of Exploration, which was from about
the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. But of course Europeans
were not the only people taking to the sea at
this point. It's possible that other nations aren't as represented
in English language literature because of language barriers or prejudice,
but it's also possible that scurvy was just not as
much of a problem outside of European fleets. Most of
(07:40):
the time, it takes between two months and twelve weeks
without vitamin C for a person to develop scurvy, and
while sailors from parts of Africa and Asia were taking
voyages that lasted much longer than that, overall, often they
were not going that long between stops to resupply. It
also seems like they may have been doing a better
job at providing their crews with foods rich in vitamin C.
(08:04):
Past podcast subject Ibn Batuta, who was from what's now
Morocco and traveled extensively during the fourteenth century, described green
vegetables and ginger being grown in tanks on Chinese vessels.
He also wrote about salted ginger, pepper, lemons, and mangoes
being loaded onto ships in preparation for long voyages. Another
(08:24):
previous podcast subject is Jungha, who led fleets of treasure
ships from China all the way to Africa in the
fifteenth century, and we don't have lists of exactly what
provisions he took, but we do know that his fleets
included huge supply vessels whose whole purpose was sustaining the
voyage itself, and that the ships had kitchens that prepared
(08:46):
meals for crews and passengers. There are also multiple references
to Tea in relation to his voyages, and t does
contain some vitamin C. For the most part, written records
of scurvy on Chinese vessel don't really start until the
nineteenth century, when people left China bound for California during
the Gold Rush. But European ships were another story. Especially
(09:10):
as European ships crossed whole oceans. People's diets were often
restricted to salted meat and hardtack and not much else. Typically,
any vegetables grown on board were only for the officers. Consequently,
it's estimated that scurvy killed two million European sailors between
the fifteenth century and the nineteenth century, which is when
(09:33):
navies started to more consistently connect scurvy prevention to things
like citrus juice. During these centuries, scurvy was the leading
cause of death amongst sailors at sea. It was also
a major cause of death among enslaved Africans during the
Transatlantic slave trade, although the details of that aspect have
not been nearly as specifically documented as with ship's crews.
(09:58):
And we're going to talk about some more specific scurvy
information after we first paused for a little sponsor break. Today,
scurvy is treated almost like a punchline in pirate jokes,
but it was an enormous problem for hundreds of years.
(10:22):
Scurvy killed a hundred of the original hundred and seventy
crew during Vasco da Gama's voyage to the Indian subcontinent
that started in fourte for Nan Magellan left Spain with
a fleet of five ships in fifteen nineteen, searching for
a way to reach Asia from Europe by traveling west
by sea. Only eighteen of his original crew of two
(10:45):
hundred and seventy made it back to Spain in two
with scurvy being a major cause of death. Here is
how one of Magellan's crew described conditions in his journal quote,
we ain't only old biscuit, reduced to outer and full
of grubs and stinking from the dirt which the rats
had made on it when eating the good biscuit, And
(11:06):
we drank water that was yellow and stinking. The men
were so hungry that if any of them caught a rat,
he could sell it for a high price to someone
who would eat it. In fifteen thirty five, French explorer
Jacques Cartier established a fort across the St. Charles River
from the Iroquois village of Staticona that's near what's now
(11:26):
Quebec City. That winter was extremely harsh. Cardier's ships became
ice bound. They were not able to return to France's
planned and when they heard of an illness that was
spreading through the indigenous population, they tried to cut off
contact with them, But then that same illness started to
spread through Cardier's own men. In an account translated by
(11:48):
Richard Hacklett, it's described as this quote. Some did lose
their strength and could not stand on their feet. Then
did their legs swell, their sinews shrink as black as
any coal. Others also had all their skins spotted with
spots of blood of a purple color. Then did ascend
up to their ankles, knees, thighs, shoulders, arms, and neck.
(12:10):
Their mouth became stinking, their gums so rotten that all
the flesh did fall off, even to the roots of
the teeth, which also all fall out. About the middle
of February, of a hundreds and ten persons that we were,
there were not ten whole. There were already eight dead,
and more than fifty six, and as we saw it
passed all hope of recovery. So at some point Cardier
(12:34):
went for a walk and encountered Domagaya, who was the
son of Don Kona, who was the chief of Staticona.
Domagaya to hold Cardier about a treatment for this disease,
which was to prepare a tea from the leaves of
a local tree. This tree is not conclusively identified today,
but the most likely candidate is the eastern white cedar,
(12:55):
whose leaves always contained some vitamin cy but have a
whole lot more of it in the new growth that
comes out in the early spring. Although at least twenty
five men in the fort died of scurvy, this cure
was effective for the ones who survived. There is a course,
of course, a whole lot more to this story outside
the part about scurvy, Cartier had actually abducted Domagaya and
(13:19):
his brother on his earlier voyage and forced them to
accompany him back to France, bringing them back to North
America with him in fifteen thirty five, and at the
end of his second voyage, Cartier abducted them for a
second time, along with their father and seven other indigenous people.
All but one of them died before Cardier returned to
North America for his third voyage. In Probably the most
(13:42):
dramatic and notorious outbreak of scurvy at sea was during
George Anson's four year voyage around the world, which started
in seventeen forty. Britain was at war with Spain, and
because of the war, Anson had a serious labor shortage.
Even press gangs, who were abducting men off the street
to force them to serve in the Royal Navy could
(14:04):
not provide him with enough men for his fleet. Eventually,
this gap was filled with men from Chelsea Hospital, most
of whom were sick, injured, or elderly to the point
that they weren't able to just leave on their own
when they got released from the hospital. The people who
did have the capacity to just walk away did that,
(14:25):
so he was left with like the oldest, sickest men
from the hospital. And then there were delays in outfitting
the ships, and the crews ate nothing but ships rations
for months as they waited, And while there were treatments
for scurvy on board, none of them contained much, if any,
vitamin C, so they did not actually work for the
(14:46):
most part. They were also really unpleasant, like drinking a
bunch of straight vinegar. I like vinegar and vinegary things,
but the idea of just gulping down a whole bunch
of it does not sound great to me. Hard pass.
Once they finally got underway, they sailed through terrible storms
and were blown off course by April of seventeen forty one.
(15:08):
Most of the men who had survived those treacherous seas
had then developed scurvy. By June, they were down from
six ships to only three, with only three hundred thirty
five survivors out of about thirteen hundred original crew. Finally
they reached the one Fernandez Islands off the coast of Chile.
These were home to plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables,
(15:30):
and as the ships took on fresh provisions and the
men ate these foods, they gradually began to recover, but
because their conditions were so dire, when they started getting
more vitamin C into their bodies, it actually took more
than a month before men stopped dying of scurvy. Anson's
dwindling fleet was struck by scurvy again in the Pacific
(15:51):
Ocean in the summer of seventeen forty two, obviously after
they had run out of the fresh provisions that they
brought on board. When his two mating ships finally got
to China, there were only two hundred and twenty seven
of the original crew still living. In spite of that,
they managed to capture a Spanish galleon that was bound
for Manila on June seventeen forty three, and then with
(16:15):
the holy a hundred and forty five of the original men,
they made it back to Britain. Because they had captured
the Spanish galleon, they were treated as heroes, with treasures
from the galleon paraded through the streets of London, and
Anson named First Lord of the Admiralty in seventeen fifty one.
At this point, I mean it might seem a little
(16:37):
weird for the person who was in charge when all
of these people died, so then become the first Lord
of the Admiralty. But at this point, European naval officials
had long seen scurvy as an almost inevitable side effect
of sending men out to sea for long periods, and
they really did not know what was going on with
this disease. They did not know about vitamin C or
(16:58):
about vitamins at all. It would be more than a
hundred and fifty more years before Casimir Funk would coin
the word vitamine to describe specific chemical substances that the
body needed to survive. They did not know about collagen either.
The molecular structure of collagen was not discovered until the
nineteen thirties. Complicating all of this, Diets that lacked vitamin
(17:22):
C often lacked other essential nutrients as well, and outbreaks
of scurvy frequently happened alongside outbreaks of contagious diseases, so
it wasn't always clear exactly what disease was at work,
and often multiple conditions were getting lumped together and described
as scurvy. So over the centuries, various people noticed that
(17:44):
an assortment of foods seemed to cure scurvy. Sometimes they
did put that discovery in writing, but it took a
really long time before navies started consistently keeping effective treatments
for it on ships. This was not just a matter
of people forgeting that citrus fruits cured scurvy, though it
is definitely described that way sometimes, like people kind of
(18:07):
frame it as people in the past we're great, big
dummies who just kept forgetting that all that needed was oranges.
In hindsight, it is really easy to see that the
things that treated scurvy effectively all have vitamin C in them.
But at the time, not only did people not know
why any of those things actually worked, but their explanations
(18:27):
for why they worked we're totally off base. So as
people try to come up with carriers that were easier
to keep fresh on ships than fruits and vegetables are,
they just kept going down the completely wrong track. Often
James Lynde is the one who gets credit for solving
the scurvy problem, but it's of course history, so that
means it's way more complicated than that, And we're going
(18:50):
to get into all of that after we pause for
a sponsor break. For hundreds of years medicine in Europe
rested on the idea of humors, and this drew from
Greek physicians and philosophers like Galen and Hippocrates. It also
(19:11):
appears in the work of Persian polymath even Sina. Similar
concepts are part of traditional Chinese medicine and agur Veda
as well. And in terms of the understanding of scurvy
and much of Europe, for hundreds of years, it was
believed to be due to putrefaction of the humors, and
then that puture faction was made worse by bad food,
(19:34):
bad air, bad hygiene, or sometimes just laziness, and there
were a lot of people who figured out something that
worked to treat this. In fifteen seventy four, bal duenas
ron Cius wrote about oranges curing scurvy in Dutch sailors.
In the late sixteenth century, and Rick Oyer wrote about
cloud berries treating scurvy in Norse sailors. In sixteen seventeen,
(19:58):
John wood All published a reference book called The Surgeon's Mate,
or Military and Domestic Surgery Discovering Faithfully and Plainly Ye
method an Order of Ye Surgeon's Chest. Ye uses of
the instruments, the virtues and operations of the medicines, with
the exact cures of wounds made by gunshot and otherwise
(20:20):
as namely wounds, appost fumes, ulcers, fistulas, fractures, dislocations with
the most easy and safest ways of amputation or dismembering.
The cures of the scurvy of you, fluxes of you,
belly of eucolic and iliaca, Passio of ten Assimus and
(20:41):
Exodus Ainta, and of the calend Tour, with a Treatise
of ye Cure of ye plague, published for the service
of His Master and of the Commonwealth by John would All, Mr.
In Surgery. As that very long title mentioned, it had
an entire section on scurvy and its treatment. I think
we should bring back the days where we basically include
(21:03):
the index in the title. Yeah. Well, I looked at
the table of contents for it, and at one point
I had the table of contents for what the section
of on scurvy included in here. But it was really
just like scurvy, it's description its treatment. Yeah. What All's
descriptions of scurvy are similar to what we talked about
(21:24):
earlier in the show. And as for its cure, he
wrote the quote as a famous writer named Johannes Ectius,
in a treatise Discorbuto, affirms consistent chiefly in four things,
namely in opening obstructions, evacuating the offending humors, in altering
the property of them, and in comforting and corroborating the
(21:44):
parts late diseased. What all stresses the need to keep
the cruise quarters clean and sweet, with as much high
quality comfortable food as possible. But if someone does get scurvy,
they should be bled and given some quote, pills of
youth fourbium or otherwise pibula, ruffie or cambosia. And then
(22:05):
after that some spoon meat, or some oatmeal or egg yolk,
or a broth of currants and other fruit, or some
sugar or spices, or some barley water, or some oil
of vitriol which is sulfuric acid, or putting some dried
wormwood in the patient's drink. And then quote further, the
surgeon or his mate must not fail to persuade the
(22:28):
governor or purser in all places where they touched in
the ndies, and may have it to provide themselves of
juice of oranges, limes or lemons, and at Bantham of tamarinds.
In the Surgeon's mate, Wood all makes lots of references
to citrus fruit, but he's really focused on when cruiser
in places where those fruits grow, because quote, the sea
(22:49):
surgeon shall do little good at sea with them, neither
will they endure. Yeah, he had stuff about citrus fruit
in here, but it was really about when they were
on land. And he also included and so many other
things that would not have been effective at all. Oil
of vitriol was a very common scurvy treatment. It was
literally sulfuric acid. It was that was not helpful. In
(23:12):
sixteen twenty two, Sir Richard Hawkins, who called scurvy quote
the plague of the sea and the spoil of mariners,
wrote that sour lemons and oranges could treat it. In
sixty five, Ambrosius Rhodius defended and published the first Scandinavian
doctoral thesis, and it was on scurvy. It described treating
(23:33):
scurvy with scurvy grass, common chick weed, watercress, mustard plants,
and the cloud berries that we mentioned earlier on in
the show. Ambrosius Rhodius did seem to understand that scurvy
was connected to nutrition, but his ideas on how that
worked were a little bit fuzzy. It was connected to
the idea of canceling out opposites shower. By the late
(23:57):
sixteen hundreds, people were using the word anti scorbutic to
describe things they believed to be useful against scurvy. Dutch
physician Johannes bach Schram used the term to describe fresh
fruits and vegetables in seventeen thirty four. Also in the
eighteenth century, Baron Gerhard von Swieten talked about scarcity of
(24:17):
greens and vegetables as contributing to scurvy, but he also
attributed it to quote noisome vapors arising from marshy grounds
and stagnating waters, in action, drinking of corrupted and stagnating waters,
the use of salted and smoked flesh and fish, damp
and low lodgings, as well as sorrow, nostalgia and homesickness.
(24:40):
According to von Sweeten, treatment for scurvy involved quote, correcting
the impure waters and also purging. He also made dietary
recommendations quote the food should be broth with sheervil sorrel spinage, lettuce,
andy suckery, cabbage, especially red cat abbage, young nettle, buds
(25:01):
and tops, or any other sort of tender herbage boiled
in it. The preference to be given to those easiest
to come at. Fruit quite ripe, used moderately always produces
a good effect. But if neither fruit nor greens can
be procured, the patient must have his broth with barley,
oats or rice. He may eat likewise a little veal
(25:23):
or foul, but it must be moderately. So A lot
of people had noted fresh fruits and vegetables, including citrus fruits,
as a treatment for scurvy by the time James Lynde
had entered the British Royal Navy as a surgeon's mate
in seventeen thirty nine. He became a full surgeon in
seventeen forty six, and he was aboard the HMS Salisbury
(25:44):
in seventeen forty seven when there was an outbreak of scurvy.
Lend did an experiment which is sometimes described as the
world's first controlled clinical trial. He selected twelve sailors, all
of whom had scurvy that he described as being at
a similar point of progression, and he paired them up,
and he gave each pair a different treatment over the
(26:06):
course of two weeks. These were treatments that already existed
for scurvy, except for seawater, which was apparently more of
a placebo. Don't drink seawater. It's not a good plan.
But these these pairs were each given a quart of
cider per day, twenty five drops of a lixir of
(26:26):
vitriol three times a day, half a pint of seawater
a day, a nutmeg sized paste of garlic, mustard seed,
horse radish, balsam of peru and gummer three times a day,
two spoonfuls of vinegar three times a day, or two
oranges and one lemon each day. I mean, I might
(26:49):
opt for the nutmegs size paste of garlic, but that's
just me. I mean I kind of do that. Anyway.
The men who were even cider improved somewhat because of
the way cider was made at the time, it probably
did have some vitamin C in it. But the two
men who got oranges and lemons improved so dramatically that
(27:10):
they were determined to be well after six days, and
from that point they actually helped take care of the
others while he was writing about this lend reference to
bile duenas Rosius writing about oranges curing Dutch sailors from
like two hundred years before, and he said, quote here
indeed is a remarkable and authentic proof of the great
(27:31):
efficacy of juice of lemons against this disease. But these
fruits have this particular advantage above any theory that can
be prepared for trial, that they're experienced virtues have stood
the test of near two hundred years. Lynde left the
Navy in seventeen. In seventeen fifty three, he wrote a
treatise of the Scurvy, containing an inquiry into the nature, causes,
(27:55):
and cure of that disease, together with a critical and
chronological view of what has been blished on the subject.
And while this did include the sentence quote oranges and
lemons were the most effectual remedies for this distemperate sea,
that was only one tiny part of a four hundred
page work that talked about a lot of other stuff
related to scurvy. For example, he did not think there
(28:17):
was a direct cause and effect relationship between the fruit
and the scurvy. He actually thought scurvy was a digestive
disease that was caused by blocked sweat glands, and that
the fruit and to a lesser extent, the cider, we're
all clearing those blockages. And he also thought that other
blockage clearing substances could potentially have the same effect. Lynde
(28:39):
also recognized that you cannot really just keep citrus fruits
fresh on a ship for a lengthy sea voyage, so
he recommended concentrating the juice into a rob, but because
of the way that ROB was concentrated, the end result
would not have actually contained much vitamin sea at all.
(29:00):
I'm I'm thinking of people who drink orange flavored drink
and make jokes about not getting scurvy, and I'm like,
there's not really much orange. Yeah. Over the next decades,
other people writing about citrus fruits and scurvy attributed their
effectiveness to their being a stimulant, or because they were
full of a vital air that was leaching out of
(29:22):
sailor's bodies at sea. Irish Dr David McBride tested malt wort,
which he believed provided fixed air as a scurvy treatment,
although his results were clouded by the fact that he
also gave some of his patients citrus fruit. Another person
who claimed to conquer scurvy was Captain James Cook, and
(29:43):
although there were some scurvy outbreaks on his voyages, there
weren't any deaths because of it. His preferred scurvy preventives
were portable soup which was basically bully on powder, which
I am calling portable soup from now on, as well
as malt and so kraut, and of those three things
only the sauer kraut would have contained much vitamin C
(30:06):
as long as they were eating it raw. He also
insisted on bringing fresh provisions onto the ship at every
possible stop, which would have kept them supplied more with
fresh fruits and vegetables, and he also insisted on keeping
the ship really clean, which would have helped slow the
spread of communicable diseases. Finally, after hundreds of years of
(30:27):
various people suggesting that citrus might play some part in
curing scurvy, in sevent Gilbert Blaine got the British Royal
Navy to issue lemon juice to every sailor. This worked
to Britain's advantage during the Napoleonic Wars, and during the
nineteenth century, more and more European explorers and naval officials
(30:48):
started stressing the need for lemon or lime juice, or
for some kind of fresh vegetables on board. In one,
William Perry's expedition to the Arctic took quote a shallow
tray filled with mold on which to grow mustard and cress,
and their parties only death from scurvy was an officer
who refused to eat them. Sir John Franklin's expedition in
(31:11):
eighteen forty five kept scurvy at bay for twenty seven
months with lemon juice, with scurvy outbreaks beginning only after
that supply of lemon juice ran out. For the most part,
the British Navy had started out using lemon juice made
from lemons from the Mediterranean to prevent scurvy. In the
mid nineteenth century, they instead started using limes from the
(31:33):
Caribbean islands of Montserra and Bermuda. Part of the rash
now here was the idea that lime juice was more
acidic and would thus be more effective at clearing out
purported blackages. There was also because Britain had claimed those
islands as territories, so there was they could get things
from them that was a free asset to them in
(31:54):
their minds. For to them is the very very important
part of that phrasing. But scurvy outbreaks kept happening in
other places besides European navies. Scurvy was a problem during
the Great Famine that started in Ireland in eighteen forty five,
which would later lead people to incorrectly conclude that it
was connected to potassium deficiency. When pasteurization was introduced in
(32:19):
the late nineteenth century, there was an outbreak of scurvy
in babies whose families were wealthy enough to be feeding
them pasteurized milk. In the early twentieth century, researchers at
the Lister Institute in London realized that guinea pigs could
develop a condition that seemed identical to scurvey. As we
mentioned up at the top of the show, guinea pigs
(32:41):
also cannot synthesize their own vitamin c axel Holst and
Theodore Frolick discovered that if the guinea pigs were fed
only grains, they became ill, but then if they were
given cabbage or lemon juice, they got better. They published
their work on this in nineteen oh seven and then
five years later and nine team twelve was when Casimir
(33:01):
Funk coined the term vitamine, which later morphed into vitamin.
At this point, the Lister Institute was doing a lot
of research into nutritional deficiencies, with many of the researchers
being women. At the institute, Harriet Chick and Margaret Hume
started identifying more and more foods that had anti score
(33:21):
butic properties, including cabbage, onions, carrots, fruit juices, and potatoes.
Alice Henderson Smith also researched exactly which fruits had historically
been used in British Navy treatments and their efficacy. By
the nineteen twenties, it was clear that scurvy was a
deficiency and a specific nutrient, but nobody had been able
(33:44):
to isolate the nutrient itself. Then, in night, Albert sent
Jorgie isolated a compound in paprika that he named hexauronic acid,
but it was later renamed a scorbic acid because of
its whole anti score butic effect. In ninety seven, he
was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine quote
(34:05):
for his discoveries in connection with the biological combustion processes
with special reference to vitamin C and the catalysis of
fumaric acid. Today, it is of course common knowledge that
vitamin C prevents scurvy, but it can still develop any
time people cannot get enough vitamin C. Yeah, it's uh.
(34:26):
I read lots of articles about various outbreaks in various
places for everything from like refugee camps where there just
are not adequate provisions, to like fad diets where people
have tried to cut all fruit out of their diet,
like just all over the place. Um. And you know,
as we said at the top of the show, people
(34:46):
who have, whether it's a physiological condition or a psychological conditions,
who either aren't able to eat or aren't able to
absorb nutrients from their food. Lots of cases still happen today.
Do you also have a little bit of list sner
mail that may or may not contain vitamin C? I
do have some listener mail. The first one is actually
super super quick a listener tweet. UM. In the episode
(35:10):
on Vivian Thomas, I had said I was not sure
why he was given an honorary doctorate of laws instead
of an honorary medical doctorate, and we got a tweet
from Randy who said the m D degree is never
given an honorary status, as it confers the ability to
apply for a medical license, doctor of laws, of doctor
(35:31):
of humane letters may be given in its place, depending
on the institution. Uh. That is a thing that had
occurred to me as the possible reason when I was researching.
But then I saw that there were people who had
gotten honorary m d s, and it occurred to me
only after reading Randy's tweet that those people were probably
(35:51):
already doctors because it has been a very long year. Right.
I also got uh an email from Dustin who wrote
in after our episodes on Jim thorpe Um to talk
about the amateur athlete requirements in the Olympics, and so
(36:15):
Dustin wrote, Holly and Tracy, I want to start by
saying that although I have not been listening to your
podcast for long, I absolutely love it. Recover a wide
variety of interesting people from so many different fields of interest,
and you always have interesting commentary as you narrate us
through these lives. I appreciate your research and the details
you bring in from different biographies or other sources. While
listening to your first, though perhaps not last, three parter
(36:37):
on Jim Thorpe. That really had me riveted the whole
way through. I was wondering about when the Olympics changed,
as it clearly now allows professional athletes to compete. Furthermore,
after some of your other listener mail, I decided to
poke around myself and share what I found with you.
So it was not until one that the IOC removed
the rule requiring amateurism. What's most interesting was it was
(37:00):
not a result of the de leisurizing of amateur sports
and the blurring line between the amateur and pro level
which you spoke about in the podcast. According to what
I read, it had largely to do with Eastern Bloc
nations such as the USSR, sponsoring their best pros and
listing them as soldiers to skirt the rules. Essentially, the
(37:20):
Soviets cheated and broke the rules of the process. The
next step was the adoption into law of the Amateur
Sports Act of nineteen seventy eight, also known as the
Ted Stevens Act, named for the U S senator who
introduced it. This established the US Olympic Committee and allowed
them to create additional national governing bodies for each sport,
such as US Figure Skating and the United States Fencing Association.
(37:43):
These bodies were basically used to select Olympic team members
and govern the amateur competitions in these sports. Fun side note,
the Act requires these MGB committees to be at least
twenty percent voting representation to include active athletes completed within
the last ten years, ensuring the athletes have some say
and the way their sports are formed. UM skipping ahead, UH,
(38:06):
tiny bit. So this wasn't necessarily a response to the
factors of increased rigor at the amateur level, but spurred
on by the same issues of Soviet state sponsored athletes
having an upper hand, as well as the issues UH
with the a AU. As you all discussed in the podcast,
a AU had made some questionable decisions regarding the rules
they had in place and the ways in which these
(38:27):
rules were interpreted and enforced. So there is some more
detail in the email from there. I had not looked
more deeply into how the the amateur definitions and requirements
had UM had developed following Jim Thorpe's time in the Olympics. UM.
I know there is still so many other social and
(38:51):
UH and representative issues going on in the world of sports, um,
and it is fascinating to me that how how much
of that was related to not exactly international politics, but
having like grown up in the tail end of the
Cold War, I was like, oh, yeah, that makes a
lot of sense. So anyway, thank you so much Dustin
for poking into all that and sending us what you found. Uh,
(39:15):
if anyone else would like to write to us about
this or any other podcast, we are at History Podcast
at iHeart radio dot com, and we're all over social
media at miss in History just where you'll find our Facebook, interest, Twitter,
and Instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on
Apple podcasts and the I heart Radio app and anywhere
else to get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History
(39:41):
Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy fee Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. This episode
is the last episode I am writing for the year.
(00:22):
It's been a year. Hooray, Yeah, hooray. Also, I've just
I've had minimal contact with anybody besides my spouse in
almost nine months, and for some reason, my brain keeps
being like scurvy and that connection doesn't make sense really,
because if I were to get a vitamin deficiency because
(00:45):
of the pandemic, it would probably be about vitamin D
from the not going out into the sun. Is that
what you're saying is that your brain is making a
weird jump of concern of vitamin deficiency. Maybe not concerned,
but maybe more like at least they don't have scurvy,
like huh, But brain, that doesn't make any sense anyway.
(01:07):
That's what we're going to talk about today, is scurvy
because just for some weird reason, my brain keeps coming
back around to it in these times of winter and pandemic.
So scurvy, in case you don't know, and you probably do,
is a deficiency in vitamin c or asorbic acid, and
its story goes way way back in history, all the
(01:28):
way to our evolutionary ancestors living more than sixty million
years ago, and with a few exceptions including guinea pigs
and bats, most mammals can generate their own asorbic acid,
and that included those primate ancestors. But somewhere along the way,
a random genetic mutation broke the ability to produce an
(01:48):
enzyme known as l galuno lactone oxidase or GULO, which
is a necessary part of making a sorbic acid. A
sorbic acid is also necessary the body uses it to
send the size the protein collagen, and collagen is a
crucially important part of our connective tissue. We needed to
do really important things like hold our skin and blood
(02:10):
vessels together. So if the body cannot replace worn out collagen,
it causes serious problems. The first symptoms of scurvy involve fatigue, lethargy,
and aching joints. People start to bruise easily, wounds won't heal,
and old wounds reopen. The gums start to bleed, and
the teeth start to loosen and can in fact come
(02:32):
out entirely. This is also accompanied by foul odors, including
very bad breath. Without treatment with vitamin C, scurvy is
eventually fatal, often because of acute internal bleeding around the
brain or heart. But when our ancestors stopped being able
to produce gulo, this really did not matter. They were
(02:54):
living in tropical areas and their diets included lots of
fresh fruits and vegetables, so they were getting ncy of
vitamin C through their food. If this had not been
through this genetic mutation that shut off the ability to
synthesize ghulu would have wiped them out, but since their
diets were rich with vitamin C, they continued to thrive.
As people started living farther from tropical areas, they started
(03:17):
eating more foods that did not necessarily contain as much
vitamin C, but most of the time this was still
not a big problem. Most dietary recommendations call for significantly
more vitamin C, but it doesn't actually take that much
just to prevent scurvy, only about ten milligrams a day
or all you need, and although vitamin C is mostly
associated with fruits and vegetables, it is found in other
(03:40):
foods as well. Most meat contains a little if it
hasn't been cooked too long, and liver and kidney meat
in particular contained quite a bit of it. So, as
one example, the practice of eating raw organ meat in
far northern indigenous communities provides protection from scurvy even when
plant based foods are unavailable or out of season. So
(04:01):
as communities established themselves around the world, people had to
have some kind of vitamin C in their diets, otherwise
that community just could not survive. But anytime that access
to food was cut off in some way, say because
of a war or a famine, people could start to
develop scurvy. And this was also true for people with
(04:22):
diseases and conditions that kept them from eating or kept
them from absorbing the nutrients and their food. And the
word scurvy comes from older terms that mean lazy, scabbed,
or scurf, which used to be used to describe dandruff.
People started using it to describe this disease in about
the sixteenth century, but written descriptions of scurvy that predate
(04:45):
that word are much older. The earliest likely description of
scurvy is found in the Egyptian document known as the
Ebers Papyrus, which dates back to about fift b c E.
Past podcast subject for Shrewda described a condition involving leading
gums and loosening teeth around eight hundred BC. Roughly four
hundred years later, Greek physician Hippocrates described what was probably scurvy,
(05:10):
and while he did not go into detail about the
cure he knew for it, he did note that it
wasn't effective and that patients usually died. Traditional Chinese medicine
texts described collections of symptoms that very much resemble scurvy
as well. So today scurvy is associated with long sea
voyages and his humanity took to the sea. People worked
(05:33):
out some ways to prevent it, although really without necessarily
knowing that that was what they were doing. Many of
the earliest seafarers stuck close to the coasts or the
island hopped, and that gave them plenty of opportunities to
stock up on fresh food. But his voyages got longer,
many also had foods on board that were rich in
(05:53):
vitamin C. It's possible that Polynesian wayfinders introduced sweet potatoes
to Central and South America. They would have brought them
with them over thousands of miles of ocean and sweet
potatoes contained vitamin C. Scandinavians stocked their ships with cloud berries,
which have about four times as much vitamin C as
(06:15):
oranges do. Unpasteurized milk also contains vitamin C, so seafarers
who had dairy animals on board could get it that way.
While scurvy was common enough to be documented in ancient
medical literature, one of the first specifically documented outbreaks happened
in the thirteenth century during the Eighth Crusade, King Louis
(06:36):
the ninth lay siege to Tunis. Although there were plenty
of fresh fruits and vegetables available in the area, the
king and his fighting force were mostly eating fish, and
many were also undertaking religious fasts. The king and about
a sixth of his men died of disease during the siege.
For a long time, their deaths were attributed to plague,
(06:56):
but more recent research has found evidence of scurvy in
the king's jawbone. Not long after this, scurvy started to
become a serious problem on European ships during long sea voyages,
and most of the literature that's related to scurvy in
history today is focused primarily on Europe and its colonies,
(07:17):
mostly during the Age of Exploration, which was from about
the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. But of course Europeans
were not the only people taking to the sea at
this point. It's possible that other nations aren't as represented
in English language literature because of language barriers or prejudice,
but it's also possible that scurvy was just not as
much of a problem outside of European fleets. Most of
(07:40):
the time, it takes between two months and twelve weeks
without vitamin C for a person to develop scurvy, and
while sailors from parts of Africa and Asia were taking
voyages that lasted much longer than that, overall, often they
were not going that long between stops to resupply. It
also seems like they may have been doing a better
job at providing their crews with foods rich in vitamin C.
(08:04):
Past podcast subject Ibn Batuta, who was from what's now
Morocco and traveled extensively during the fourteenth century, described green
vegetables and ginger being grown in tanks on Chinese vessels.
He also wrote about salted ginger, pepper, lemons, and mangoes
being loaded onto ships in preparation for long voyages. Another
(08:24):
previous podcast subject is Jungha, who led fleets of treasure
ships from China all the way to Africa in the
fifteenth century, and we don't have lists of exactly what
provisions he took, but we do know that his fleets
included huge supply vessels whose whole purpose was sustaining the
voyage itself, and that the ships had kitchens that prepared
(08:46):
meals for crews and passengers. There are also multiple references
to Tea in relation to his voyages, and t does
contain some vitamin C. For the most part, written records
of scurvy on Chinese vessel don't really start until the
nineteenth century, when people left China bound for California during
the Gold Rush. But European ships were another story. Especially
(09:10):
as European ships crossed whole oceans. People's diets were often
restricted to salted meat and hardtack and not much else. Typically,
any vegetables grown on board were only for the officers. Consequently,
it's estimated that scurvy killed two million European sailors between
the fifteenth century and the nineteenth century, which is when
(09:33):
navies started to more consistently connect scurvy prevention to things
like citrus juice. During these centuries, scurvy was the leading
cause of death amongst sailors at sea. It was also
a major cause of death among enslaved Africans during the
Transatlantic slave trade, although the details of that aspect have
not been nearly as specifically documented as with ship's crews.
(09:58):
And we're going to talk about some more specific scurvy
information after we first paused for a little sponsor break. Today,
scurvy is treated almost like a punchline in pirate jokes,
but it was an enormous problem for hundreds of years.
(10:22):
Scurvy killed a hundred of the original hundred and seventy
crew during Vasco da Gama's voyage to the Indian subcontinent
that started in fourte for Nan Magellan left Spain with
a fleet of five ships in fifteen nineteen, searching for
a way to reach Asia from Europe by traveling west
by sea. Only eighteen of his original crew of two
(10:45):
hundred and seventy made it back to Spain in two
with scurvy being a major cause of death. Here is
how one of Magellan's crew described conditions in his journal quote,
we ain't only old biscuit, reduced to outer and full
of grubs and stinking from the dirt which the rats
had made on it when eating the good biscuit, And
(11:06):
we drank water that was yellow and stinking. The men
were so hungry that if any of them caught a rat,
he could sell it for a high price to someone
who would eat it. In fifteen thirty five, French explorer
Jacques Cartier established a fort across the St. Charles River
from the Iroquois village of Staticona that's near what's now
(11:26):
Quebec City. That winter was extremely harsh. Cardier's ships became
ice bound. They were not able to return to France's
planned and when they heard of an illness that was
spreading through the indigenous population, they tried to cut off
contact with them, But then that same illness started to
spread through Cardier's own men. In an account translated by
(11:48):
Richard Hacklett, it's described as this quote. Some did lose
their strength and could not stand on their feet. Then
did their legs swell, their sinews shrink as black as
any coal. Others also had all their skins spotted with
spots of blood of a purple color. Then did ascend
up to their ankles, knees, thighs, shoulders, arms, and neck.
(12:10):
Their mouth became stinking, their gums so rotten that all
the flesh did fall off, even to the roots of
the teeth, which also all fall out. About the middle
of February, of a hundreds and ten persons that we were,
there were not ten whole. There were already eight dead,
and more than fifty six, and as we saw it
passed all hope of recovery. So at some point Cardier
(12:34):
went for a walk and encountered Domagaya, who was the
son of Don Kona, who was the chief of Staticona.
Domagaya to hold Cardier about a treatment for this disease,
which was to prepare a tea from the leaves of
a local tree. This tree is not conclusively identified today,
but the most likely candidate is the eastern white cedar,
(12:55):
whose leaves always contained some vitamin cy but have a
whole lot more of it in the new growth that
comes out in the early spring. Although at least twenty
five men in the fort died of scurvy, this cure
was effective for the ones who survived. There is a course,
of course, a whole lot more to this story outside
the part about scurvy, Cartier had actually abducted Domagaya and
(13:19):
his brother on his earlier voyage and forced them to
accompany him back to France, bringing them back to North
America with him in fifteen thirty five, and at the
end of his second voyage, Cartier abducted them for a
second time, along with their father and seven other indigenous people.
All but one of them died before Cardier returned to
North America for his third voyage. In Probably the most
(13:42):
dramatic and notorious outbreak of scurvy at sea was during
George Anson's four year voyage around the world, which started
in seventeen forty. Britain was at war with Spain, and
because of the war, Anson had a serious labor shortage.
Even press gangs, who were abducting men off the street
to force them to serve in the Royal Navy could
(14:04):
not provide him with enough men for his fleet. Eventually,
this gap was filled with men from Chelsea Hospital, most
of whom were sick, injured, or elderly to the point
that they weren't able to just leave on their own
when they got released from the hospital. The people who
did have the capacity to just walk away did that,
(14:25):
so he was left with like the oldest, sickest men
from the hospital. And then there were delays in outfitting
the ships, and the crews ate nothing but ships rations
for months as they waited, And while there were treatments
for scurvy on board, none of them contained much, if any,
vitamin C, so they did not actually work for the
(14:46):
most part. They were also really unpleasant, like drinking a
bunch of straight vinegar. I like vinegar and vinegary things,
but the idea of just gulping down a whole bunch
of it does not sound great to me. Hard pass.
Once they finally got underway, they sailed through terrible storms
and were blown off course by April of seventeen forty one.
(15:08):
Most of the men who had survived those treacherous seas
had then developed scurvy. By June, they were down from
six ships to only three, with only three hundred thirty
five survivors out of about thirteen hundred original crew. Finally
they reached the one Fernandez Islands off the coast of Chile.
These were home to plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables,
(15:30):
and as the ships took on fresh provisions and the
men ate these foods, they gradually began to recover, but
because their conditions were so dire, when they started getting
more vitamin C into their bodies, it actually took more
than a month before men stopped dying of scurvy. Anson's
dwindling fleet was struck by scurvy again in the Pacific
(15:51):
Ocean in the summer of seventeen forty two, obviously after
they had run out of the fresh provisions that they
brought on board. When his two mating ships finally got
to China, there were only two hundred and twenty seven
of the original crew still living. In spite of that,
they managed to capture a Spanish galleon that was bound
for Manila on June seventeen forty three, and then with
(16:15):
the holy a hundred and forty five of the original men,
they made it back to Britain. Because they had captured
the Spanish galleon, they were treated as heroes, with treasures
from the galleon paraded through the streets of London, and
Anson named First Lord of the Admiralty in seventeen fifty one.
At this point, I mean it might seem a little
(16:37):
weird for the person who was in charge when all
of these people died, so then become the first Lord
of the Admiralty. But at this point, European naval officials
had long seen scurvy as an almost inevitable side effect
of sending men out to sea for long periods, and
they really did not know what was going on with
this disease. They did not know about vitamin C or
(16:58):
about vitamins at all. It would be more than a
hundred and fifty more years before Casimir Funk would coin
the word vitamine to describe specific chemical substances that the
body needed to survive. They did not know about collagen either.
The molecular structure of collagen was not discovered until the
nineteen thirties. Complicating all of this, Diets that lacked vitamin
(17:22):
C often lacked other essential nutrients as well, and outbreaks
of scurvy frequently happened alongside outbreaks of contagious diseases, so
it wasn't always clear exactly what disease was at work,
and often multiple conditions were getting lumped together and described
as scurvy. So over the centuries, various people noticed that
(17:44):
an assortment of foods seemed to cure scurvy. Sometimes they
did put that discovery in writing, but it took a
really long time before navies started consistently keeping effective treatments
for it on ships. This was not just a matter
of people forgeting that citrus fruits cured scurvy, though it
is definitely described that way sometimes, like people kind of
(18:07):
frame it as people in the past we're great, big
dummies who just kept forgetting that all that needed was oranges.
In hindsight, it is really easy to see that the
things that treated scurvy effectively all have vitamin C in them.
But at the time, not only did people not know
why any of those things actually worked, but their explanations
(18:27):
for why they worked we're totally off base. So as
people try to come up with carriers that were easier
to keep fresh on ships than fruits and vegetables are,
they just kept going down the completely wrong track. Often
James Lynde is the one who gets credit for solving
the scurvy problem, but it's of course history, so that
means it's way more complicated than that, And we're going
(18:50):
to get into all of that after we pause for
a sponsor break. For hundreds of years medicine in Europe
rested on the idea of humors, and this drew from
Greek physicians and philosophers like Galen and Hippocrates. It also
(19:11):
appears in the work of Persian polymath even Sina. Similar
concepts are part of traditional Chinese medicine and agur Veda
as well. And in terms of the understanding of scurvy
and much of Europe, for hundreds of years, it was
believed to be due to putrefaction of the humors, and
then that puture faction was made worse by bad food,
(19:34):
bad air, bad hygiene, or sometimes just laziness, and there
were a lot of people who figured out something that
worked to treat this. In fifteen seventy four, bal duenas
ron Cius wrote about oranges curing scurvy in Dutch sailors.
In the late sixteenth century, and Rick Oyer wrote about
cloud berries treating scurvy in Norse sailors. In sixteen seventeen,
(19:58):
John wood All published a reference book called The Surgeon's Mate,
or Military and Domestic Surgery Discovering Faithfully and Plainly Ye
method an Order of Ye Surgeon's Chest. Ye uses of
the instruments, the virtues and operations of the medicines, with
the exact cures of wounds made by gunshot and otherwise
(20:20):
as namely wounds, appost fumes, ulcers, fistulas, fractures, dislocations with
the most easy and safest ways of amputation or dismembering.
The cures of the scurvy of you, fluxes of you,
belly of eucolic and iliaca, Passio of ten Assimus and
(20:41):
Exodus Ainta, and of the calend Tour, with a Treatise
of ye Cure of ye plague, published for the service
of His Master and of the Commonwealth by John would All, Mr.
In Surgery. As that very long title mentioned, it had
an entire section on scurvy and its treatment. I think
we should bring back the days where we basically include
(21:03):
the index in the title. Yeah. Well, I looked at
the table of contents for it, and at one point
I had the table of contents for what the section
of on scurvy included in here. But it was really
just like scurvy, it's description its treatment. Yeah. What All's
descriptions of scurvy are similar to what we talked about
(21:24):
earlier in the show. And as for its cure, he
wrote the quote as a famous writer named Johannes Ectius,
in a treatise Discorbuto, affirms consistent chiefly in four things,
namely in opening obstructions, evacuating the offending humors, in altering
the property of them, and in comforting and corroborating the
(21:44):
parts late diseased. What all stresses the need to keep
the cruise quarters clean and sweet, with as much high
quality comfortable food as possible. But if someone does get scurvy,
they should be bled and given some quote, pills of
youth fourbium or otherwise pibula, ruffie or cambosia. And then
(22:05):
after that some spoon meat, or some oatmeal or egg yolk,
or a broth of currants and other fruit, or some
sugar or spices, or some barley water, or some oil
of vitriol which is sulfuric acid, or putting some dried
wormwood in the patient's drink. And then quote further, the
surgeon or his mate must not fail to persuade the
(22:28):
governor or purser in all places where they touched in
the ndies, and may have it to provide themselves of
juice of oranges, limes or lemons, and at Bantham of tamarinds.
In the Surgeon's mate, Wood all makes lots of references
to citrus fruit, but he's really focused on when cruiser
in places where those fruits grow, because quote, the sea
(22:49):
surgeon shall do little good at sea with them, neither
will they endure. Yeah, he had stuff about citrus fruit
in here, but it was really about when they were
on land. And he also included and so many other
things that would not have been effective at all. Oil
of vitriol was a very common scurvy treatment. It was
literally sulfuric acid. It was that was not helpful. In
(23:12):
sixteen twenty two, Sir Richard Hawkins, who called scurvy quote
the plague of the sea and the spoil of mariners,
wrote that sour lemons and oranges could treat it. In
sixty five, Ambrosius Rhodius defended and published the first Scandinavian
doctoral thesis, and it was on scurvy. It described treating
(23:33):
scurvy with scurvy grass, common chick weed, watercress, mustard plants,
and the cloud berries that we mentioned earlier on in
the show. Ambrosius Rhodius did seem to understand that scurvy
was connected to nutrition, but his ideas on how that
worked were a little bit fuzzy. It was connected to
the idea of canceling out opposites shower. By the late
(23:57):
sixteen hundreds, people were using the word anti scorbutic to
describe things they believed to be useful against scurvy. Dutch
physician Johannes bach Schram used the term to describe fresh
fruits and vegetables in seventeen thirty four. Also in the
eighteenth century, Baron Gerhard von Swieten talked about scarcity of
(24:17):
greens and vegetables as contributing to scurvy, but he also
attributed it to quote noisome vapors arising from marshy grounds
and stagnating waters, in action, drinking of corrupted and stagnating waters,
the use of salted and smoked flesh and fish, damp
and low lodgings, as well as sorrow, nostalgia and homesickness.
(24:40):
According to von Sweeten, treatment for scurvy involved quote, correcting
the impure waters and also purging. He also made dietary
recommendations quote the food should be broth with sheervil sorrel spinage, lettuce,
andy suckery, cabbage, especially red cat abbage, young nettle, buds
(25:01):
and tops, or any other sort of tender herbage boiled
in it. The preference to be given to those easiest
to come at. Fruit quite ripe, used moderately always produces
a good effect. But if neither fruit nor greens can
be procured, the patient must have his broth with barley,
oats or rice. He may eat likewise a little veal
(25:23):
or foul, but it must be moderately. So A lot
of people had noted fresh fruits and vegetables, including citrus fruits,
as a treatment for scurvy by the time James Lynde
had entered the British Royal Navy as a surgeon's mate
in seventeen thirty nine. He became a full surgeon in
seventeen forty six, and he was aboard the HMS Salisbury
(25:44):
in seventeen forty seven when there was an outbreak of scurvy.
Lend did an experiment which is sometimes described as the
world's first controlled clinical trial. He selected twelve sailors, all
of whom had scurvy that he described as being at
a similar point of progression, and he paired them up,
and he gave each pair a different treatment over the
(26:06):
course of two weeks. These were treatments that already existed
for scurvy, except for seawater, which was apparently more of
a placebo. Don't drink seawater. It's not a good plan.
But these these pairs were each given a quart of
cider per day, twenty five drops of a lixir of
(26:26):
vitriol three times a day, half a pint of seawater
a day, a nutmeg sized paste of garlic, mustard seed,
horse radish, balsam of peru and gummer three times a day,
two spoonfuls of vinegar three times a day, or two
oranges and one lemon each day. I mean, I might
(26:49):
opt for the nutmegs size paste of garlic, but that's
just me. I mean I kind of do that. Anyway.
The men who were even cider improved somewhat because of
the way cider was made at the time, it probably
did have some vitamin C in it. But the two
men who got oranges and lemons improved so dramatically that
(27:10):
they were determined to be well after six days, and
from that point they actually helped take care of the
others while he was writing about this lend reference to
bile duenas Rosius writing about oranges curing Dutch sailors from
like two hundred years before, and he said, quote here
indeed is a remarkable and authentic proof of the great
(27:31):
efficacy of juice of lemons against this disease. But these
fruits have this particular advantage above any theory that can
be prepared for trial, that they're experienced virtues have stood
the test of near two hundred years. Lynde left the
Navy in seventeen. In seventeen fifty three, he wrote a
treatise of the Scurvy, containing an inquiry into the nature, causes,
(27:55):
and cure of that disease, together with a critical and
chronological view of what has been blished on the subject.
And while this did include the sentence quote oranges and
lemons were the most effectual remedies for this distemperate sea,
that was only one tiny part of a four hundred
page work that talked about a lot of other stuff
related to scurvy. For example, he did not think there
(28:17):
was a direct cause and effect relationship between the fruit
and the scurvy. He actually thought scurvy was a digestive
disease that was caused by blocked sweat glands, and that
the fruit and to a lesser extent, the cider, we're
all clearing those blockages. And he also thought that other
blockage clearing substances could potentially have the same effect. Lynde
(28:39):
also recognized that you cannot really just keep citrus fruits
fresh on a ship for a lengthy sea voyage, so
he recommended concentrating the juice into a rob, but because
of the way that ROB was concentrated, the end result
would not have actually contained much vitamin sea at all.
(29:00):
I'm I'm thinking of people who drink orange flavored drink
and make jokes about not getting scurvy, and I'm like,
there's not really much orange. Yeah. Over the next decades,
other people writing about citrus fruits and scurvy attributed their
effectiveness to their being a stimulant, or because they were
full of a vital air that was leaching out of
(29:22):
sailor's bodies at sea. Irish Dr David McBride tested malt wort,
which he believed provided fixed air as a scurvy treatment,
although his results were clouded by the fact that he
also gave some of his patients citrus fruit. Another person
who claimed to conquer scurvy was Captain James Cook, and
(29:43):
although there were some scurvy outbreaks on his voyages, there
weren't any deaths because of it. His preferred scurvy preventives
were portable soup which was basically bully on powder, which
I am calling portable soup from now on, as well
as malt and so kraut, and of those three things
only the sauer kraut would have contained much vitamin C
(30:06):
as long as they were eating it raw. He also
insisted on bringing fresh provisions onto the ship at every
possible stop, which would have kept them supplied more with
fresh fruits and vegetables, and he also insisted on keeping
the ship really clean, which would have helped slow the
spread of communicable diseases. Finally, after hundreds of years of
(30:27):
various people suggesting that citrus might play some part in
curing scurvy, in sevent Gilbert Blaine got the British Royal
Navy to issue lemon juice to every sailor. This worked
to Britain's advantage during the Napoleonic Wars, and during the
nineteenth century, more and more European explorers and naval officials
(30:48):
started stressing the need for lemon or lime juice, or
for some kind of fresh vegetables on board. In one,
William Perry's expedition to the Arctic took quote a shallow
tray filled with mold on which to grow mustard and cress,
and their parties only death from scurvy was an officer
who refused to eat them. Sir John Franklin's expedition in
(31:11):
eighteen forty five kept scurvy at bay for twenty seven
months with lemon juice, with scurvy outbreaks beginning only after
that supply of lemon juice ran out. For the most part,
the British Navy had started out using lemon juice made
from lemons from the Mediterranean to prevent scurvy. In the
mid nineteenth century, they instead started using limes from the
(31:33):
Caribbean islands of Montserra and Bermuda. Part of the rash
now here was the idea that lime juice was more
acidic and would thus be more effective at clearing out
purported blackages. There was also because Britain had claimed those
islands as territories, so there was they could get things
from them that was a free asset to them in
(31:54):
their minds. For to them is the very very important
part of that phrasing. But scurvy outbreaks kept happening in
other places besides European navies. Scurvy was a problem during
the Great Famine that started in Ireland in eighteen forty five,
which would later lead people to incorrectly conclude that it
was connected to potassium deficiency. When pasteurization was introduced in
(32:19):
the late nineteenth century, there was an outbreak of scurvy
in babies whose families were wealthy enough to be feeding
them pasteurized milk. In the early twentieth century, researchers at
the Lister Institute in London realized that guinea pigs could
develop a condition that seemed identical to scurvey. As we
mentioned up at the top of the show, guinea pigs
(32:41):
also cannot synthesize their own vitamin c axel Holst and
Theodore Frolick discovered that if the guinea pigs were fed
only grains, they became ill, but then if they were
given cabbage or lemon juice, they got better. They published
their work on this in nineteen oh seven and then
five years later and nine team twelve was when Casimir
(33:01):
Funk coined the term vitamine, which later morphed into vitamin.
At this point, the Lister Institute was doing a lot
of research into nutritional deficiencies, with many of the researchers
being women. At the institute, Harriet Chick and Margaret Hume
started identifying more and more foods that had anti score
(33:21):
butic properties, including cabbage, onions, carrots, fruit juices, and potatoes.
Alice Henderson Smith also researched exactly which fruits had historically
been used in British Navy treatments and their efficacy. By
the nineteen twenties, it was clear that scurvy was a
deficiency and a specific nutrient, but nobody had been able
(33:44):
to isolate the nutrient itself. Then, in night, Albert sent
Jorgie isolated a compound in paprika that he named hexauronic acid,
but it was later renamed a scorbic acid because of
its whole anti score butic effect. In ninety seven, he
was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine quote
(34:05):
for his discoveries in connection with the biological combustion processes
with special reference to vitamin C and the catalysis of
fumaric acid. Today, it is of course common knowledge that
vitamin C prevents scurvy, but it can still develop any
time people cannot get enough vitamin C. Yeah, it's uh.
(34:26):
I read lots of articles about various outbreaks in various
places for everything from like refugee camps where there just
are not adequate provisions, to like fad diets where people
have tried to cut all fruit out of their diet,
like just all over the place. Um. And you know,
as we said at the top of the show, people
(34:46):
who have, whether it's a physiological condition or a psychological conditions,
who either aren't able to eat or aren't able to
absorb nutrients from their food. Lots of cases still happen today.
Do you also have a little bit of list sner
mail that may or may not contain vitamin C? I
do have some listener mail. The first one is actually
super super quick a listener tweet. UM. In the episode
(35:10):
on Vivian Thomas, I had said I was not sure
why he was given an honorary doctorate of laws instead
of an honorary medical doctorate, and we got a tweet
from Randy who said the m D degree is never
given an honorary status, as it confers the ability to
apply for a medical license, doctor of laws, of doctor
(35:31):
of humane letters may be given in its place, depending
on the institution. Uh. That is a thing that had
occurred to me as the possible reason when I was researching.
But then I saw that there were people who had
gotten honorary m d s, and it occurred to me
only after reading Randy's tweet that those people were probably
(35:51):
already doctors because it has been a very long year. Right.
I also got uh an email from Dustin who wrote
in after our episodes on Jim thorpe Um to talk
about the amateur athlete requirements in the Olympics, and so
(36:15):
Dustin wrote, Holly and Tracy, I want to start by
saying that although I have not been listening to your
podcast for long, I absolutely love it. Recover a wide
variety of interesting people from so many different fields of interest,
and you always have interesting commentary as you narrate us
through these lives. I appreciate your research and the details
you bring in from different biographies or other sources. While
listening to your first, though perhaps not last, three parter
(36:37):
on Jim Thorpe. That really had me riveted the whole
way through. I was wondering about when the Olympics changed,
as it clearly now allows professional athletes to compete. Furthermore,
after some of your other listener mail, I decided to
poke around myself and share what I found with you.
So it was not until one that the IOC removed
the rule requiring amateurism. What's most interesting was it was
(37:00):
not a result of the de leisurizing of amateur sports
and the blurring line between the amateur and pro level
which you spoke about in the podcast. According to what
I read, it had largely to do with Eastern Bloc
nations such as the USSR, sponsoring their best pros and
listing them as soldiers to skirt the rules. Essentially, the
(37:20):
Soviets cheated and broke the rules of the process. The
next step was the adoption into law of the Amateur
Sports Act of nineteen seventy eight, also known as the
Ted Stevens Act, named for the U S senator who
introduced it. This established the US Olympic Committee and allowed
them to create additional national governing bodies for each sport,
such as US Figure Skating and the United States Fencing Association.
(37:43):
These bodies were basically used to select Olympic team members
and govern the amateur competitions in these sports. Fun side note,
the Act requires these MGB committees to be at least
twenty percent voting representation to include active athletes completed within
the last ten years, ensuring the athletes have some say
and the way their sports are formed. UM skipping ahead, UH,
(38:06):
tiny bit. So this wasn't necessarily a response to the
factors of increased rigor at the amateur level, but spurred
on by the same issues of Soviet state sponsored athletes
having an upper hand, as well as the issues UH
with the a AU. As you all discussed in the podcast,
a AU had made some questionable decisions regarding the rules
they had in place and the ways in which these
(38:27):
rules were interpreted and enforced. So there is some more
detail in the email from there. I had not looked
more deeply into how the the amateur definitions and requirements
had UM had developed following Jim Thorpe's time in the Olympics. UM.
I know there is still so many other social and
(38:51):
UH and representative issues going on in the world of sports, um,
and it is fascinating to me that how how much
of that was related to not exactly international politics, but
having like grown up in the tail end of the
Cold War, I was like, oh, yeah, that makes a
lot of sense. So anyway, thank you so much Dustin
for poking into all that and sending us what you found. Uh,
(39:15):
if anyone else would like to write to us about
this or any other podcast, we are at History Podcast
at iHeart radio dot com, and we're all over social
media at miss in History just where you'll find our Facebook, interest, Twitter,
and Instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on
Apple podcasts and the I heart Radio app and anywhere
else to get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History
(39:41):
Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
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Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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