Chris Higgins
How Scurvy Was Cured, then the Cure Was Lost
by Chris Higgins - March 8, 2010 - 1:44 PM

Oranges, Lemons, and Limes

Yes, this really happened: scurvy was “cured” as early as 1497, when Vasco de Gama’s crew discovered the power of citrus…but this cure was repeatedly lost, forgotten, rediscovered, misconstrued, confused, and just generally messed around with for hundreds of years, despite being a leading killer of seafarers and other explorers. By the 1870s the “citrus cure” was discredited, and for nearly sixty years, scurvy — despite being cured, with scientific research to back it up — continued killing people, including men on Scott’s 1911 expedition to the South Pole. This went on until vitamin C was finally isolated in 1932 during research on guinea pigs. Self-described painter/computer guy Maciej Ceglowski gives us the absurdly fascinating story of scurvy — a bizarre tale of science gone wrong, and a really good explanation of why you should eat a bit of citrus once in a while. (I would argue from this piece alone that Ceglowski needs to add “science journalist” to his title.)

Now, I had been taught in school that scurvy had been conquered in 1747, when the Scottish physician James Lind proved in one of the first controlled medical experiments that citrus fruits were an effective cure for the disease. From that point on, we were told, the Royal Navy had required a daily dose of lime juice to be mixed in with sailors’ grog, and scurvy ceased to be a problem on long ocean voyages.

But here was a Royal Navy surgeon in 1911 apparently ignorant of what caused the disease, or how to cure it. Somehow a highly-trained group of scientists at the start of the 20th century knew less about scurvy than the average sea captain in Napoleonic times. [Robert Falcon] Scott left a [South Pole] base abundantly stocked with fresh meat, fruits, apples, and lime juice, and headed out on the ice for five months with no protection against scurvy, all the while confident he was not at risk. What happened?

… In the second half of the nineteenth century, the cure for scurvy was lost. The story of how this happened is a striking demonstration of the problem of induction, and how progress in one field of study can lead to unintended steps backward in another.

Read the rest for a highly readable, thoroughly researched history of scurvy and its treatment.

See also: our Scurvy T-Shirt (“When Life Gives You Scurvy, Make Lemonade”).

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattieb/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

(Story via Waxy.org.)

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Comments (11)

  1. Sounds to me like someone should have written it down in a sailing manual somewhere, or at LEAST written a sea shanty or two with its involvement!

    posted by Kate on 3-8-2010 at 3:07 pm

  2. Kate-I believe it was. It goes, “Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?”:)

    posted by Rich on 3-8-2010 at 4:28 pm

  3. It was only lost as far as European medicine was concerned. Jacques Cartier learned of a native remedy for scurvy back in 1540 (they boiled pine needles in water and drank the mixture).

    posted by Romeo Vitelli on 3-8-2010 at 4:32 pm

  4. Do dogs get scurvy? Just wondering if the term ‘scurvy dogs’ had any truth to it.

    posted by Yardbird on 3-8-2010 at 4:47 pm

  5. Are you thinking of scurvy “cur”? Cur=mongrel.

    posted by Joscel on 3-8-2010 at 7:53 pm

  6. I hear that some first-year university students are getting scurvy since they’re not eating right. One mom was so distraught upon hearing that her son had scurvy that she wrote a how-to book for kids moving out. Seems her son was living off beer and chicken wings only. Nice…

    posted by Ranger J on 3-8-2010 at 8:43 pm

  7. Actually, it’s been forgotten again, at least twice. Note the 1967 article! I saw a woman in 2008 who used a severe diet and seemed to have the same problem.

    http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/199/11/794

    “Scurvy Produced by a Zen Macrobiotic Diet
    Paul Sherlock, MD; Edmund O. Rothschild, MD
    JAMA. 1967;199(11):794-798.”

    “A woman who embraced a Zen macrobiotic philosophy with its rigid nutritional system was completely bedridden and near death with the classical manifestations of scurvy and severe folic acid and protein deficiency. This rigid diet is a threat to life and should be condemned.”

    http://www.mdanderson.org/education-and-research/departments-programs-and-labs/departments-and-divisions/clinical-nutrition/complementary-therapies/clinical-nutrition-macrobiotic-diet.html

    “Precautions
    “Originally, advocates of the macrobiotic diet promoted a 10-stage regimen that became increasingly restrictive with each stage. Macrobiotic counselors no longer advocate this type of restrictive diet, because it results in health problems such as scurvy, malnutrition and death.”

    BTW, “scurvy dog” appears to be an uncomplimentary variant of “sea dog”, historic slang meaning an experienced sailor.

    posted by Calumny on 3-8-2010 at 10:16 pm

  8. My mom’s picky cousin had scurvy when she was young (probably in the 70s). After that diagnosis her mother became much more forceful about what she ate.

    posted by Kelsey on 3-9-2010 at 10:09 am

  9. Calumny-that sort of explains why Gwenyth looks so wan…LOL!

    posted by Helenann on 3-9-2010 at 11:09 am

  10. My sister says her insurance plan covers scurvy.

    posted by Sara in AL on 3-9-2010 at 12:21 pm

  11. Sara, what would your sister’s insurance plan do, pay her to buy a lemon?

    posted by Calumny on 3-10-2010 at 6:50 pm

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