Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Scurvy (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. When Europeans began sailing the high seas on extended voyages, the most deadly thing they encountered wasn't enemy navies, starvation, or even shipwrecks. It was a painful disease where your body would literally start falling apart, and it killed more than two million sailors between the voyage of Columbus to the middle 19th century. Learn more about scurvy and how it was eventually conquered on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

Starting point is 00:00:55 It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Any discussion of scurvy has to start with what the disease is. At its simplest, scurvy is caused by a lot of. lack of vitamin C. Most mammal species can produce their own vitamin C. Humans, however, are one of the few species which cannot. So this then raises the question, why is vitamin C so important? Probably the most important protein in your body is collagen. It serves as the primary component in many of the

Starting point is 00:01:35 connective tissues in your body. It's found in your cartilage, bones, gums, tendons, ligaments, and skin. Vitamin C is a vital component for your body to build collagen. Without vitamin C, you you can't produce collagen, and if you can't produce collagen, you literally can't build the stuff which hold your body together. This is why scurvy is such a nasty disease. Your body starts to fall apart, and that can be incredibly painful. The symptoms of scurvy can begin after only a month without vitamin C. It starts with just feeling sluggish. Then you might bruise easily. Finally, your gums might bleed, your teeth might fall out, and your skin might openly just start bleeding. These are just the outward symptoms. Internally, all of your connective tissue is

Starting point is 00:02:19 falling apart, and many of your internal organs would be bleeding as well. One unnamed 16th century English ship surgeon spoke about his personal experience with scurvy. He wrote, It rotted all my gums which gave out a black and putrid blood. My thighs on lower legs were black and gangrenous, and I was forced to use my knife each day to cut into the flesh in order to release this black and foul blood. I also used my knife on my gums, which were livid and growing over my teeth. When I had cut away this dead flesh and caused much black blood to flow, I rinsed my mouth and teeth with my urine, rubbing them very hard. And the unfortunate thing was that I could not eat, desiring more to swallow than to chew. Many of our people died of it every day, and we saw

Starting point is 00:03:04 bodies thrown into the sea constantly, three or four at a time. Unquote. The history of this disease and how it was eventually solved as a fascinating one, which involves discovering and forgetting the cure many times throughout history. Scurvy was known to the ancients. There are records of ancient Egyptians and Greeks who knew about scurvy. A fifth-century Chinese monk called Fashien wrote about how the Chinese sailors suffered from scurvy and how they carried ginger on board to help keep it at bay. Historically, it was never a common disease. It would appear here and there, and usually under special circumstances. It was with the start of the start of the disease. It was with the start of of the age of exploration when Scurvy became a real serious problem. When ships set out on a long

Starting point is 00:03:47 voyage, they took food with them, which could be kept on a ship. They didn't have refrigeration, and they really didn't have any food storage technology beyond drying and salting. The typical diet aboard a ship at the time consisted of about 3,000 daily calories. The average sailor would get about a pound of salted pork or beef, a pound of hard tack, which was an extremely dense and hard biscuit, and a gallon of ale. There also might be some dried beans and lentils. However, there was nothing in their diet that was fresh. Although scurvy was the most pronounced problem, there were other nutrient deficiencies that showed up as well. The lack of vitamin B1 caused berry, and a lack of vitamin B2 caused Pellegras. These conditions would often go hand in

Starting point is 00:04:29 hand. The weird thing about scurvy is that during this period, it was a huge problem that affected millions of sailors. However, it wasn't as if there wasn't a lot of opinion on how to treat scurvy, and many of the people who had theories on how to treat scurvy were right. Back then, no one had any clue there were things called cells or bacteria, let alone molecules like vitamin C. There weren't even controlled experiments at the time, so everything was just anecdotal evidence and conjecture. The cure for scurvy was discovered repeatedly. In 1536, the French explorer Jacques Cartier was exploring the St. Lawrence River in Canada. when his crew was suffering from scurvy.

Starting point is 00:05:06 The natives in the area taught his crew how to make tea out of certain pine needles, and those needles contained vitamin C. Early Portuguese explorers who sailed around Africa to reach India planted fruits and vegetables on the island of St. Helena, for ships to stop and get fresh supplies on their voyage. In 1579, Spanish monk and Dr. Augustine Féfan recommended the consumption of oranges and lemons. In 1593, British Admiral Sir Richard Hawkins

Starting point is 00:05:31 advocated consuming orange juice and lemon juice to cure scurvy. While many people were right, there were also a lot of wrong ideas. Many people thought that scurvy wasn't a deficiency in something. They thought it was due to eating the salt pork or the salt beef on a ship. Others had the crazy idea that it was due to sailors who long for the earth. They thought the cure was to bring a box of dirt from the home country and to cover the person suffering in scurvy in it and let them take an earth bath. One of the first people who can be credited with taking a major step towards solving the problem of scurvy in a practical sense was Captain James Cook. In his very long voyages in the Pacific, he had greatly reduced but not eliminated scurvy

Starting point is 00:06:11 by requiring his crew to consume sauerkraut every day. He also insisted on getting fresh fruits and vegetables at every stop. The person who is credited with really solving the scurvy problem is the Scottish Dr. James Lynde. He was a naval doctor who did an actual clinical trial which showed that lime juice worked, and that it worked better than anything else he tried to cure scurvy. Lind isn't just credited with solving the problem of scurvy, but also with conducting the first clinical trial in medical history. His advice was eventually adopted by the Royal Navy, who in the late 18th century mandated lemon juice be served every day to sailors. In 1794, the HMS Suffolk set off from England for India. The Suffolk arrived in India without

Starting point is 00:06:54 a single case of scurvy, and the reports were that the crew arrived, healthier than when they left. In 1867, Rose's lime juice was invented, which was the first fruit concentrate, and allowed for the preservation of lime juice without alcohol. That same year, the Royal Navy mandated the daily consumption of lime juice for all its sailors, thereby basically eliminating scurvy. And this is where the term limey came from, as a pejorative for the English. I should note that citrus wasn't the only cure for scurvy. In 1801, when Napoleon's army was pinned down in the siege of Alexandria in Egypt, his chief doctor ordered the consumption of fresh horse meat to prevent scurvy. And it worked. Fresh meat does have vitamin C, albeit not as much as citrus fruit.

Starting point is 00:07:40 That is why the Inuits who live north of the Arctic Circle and tribes like the Maasai in Africa who eat almost exclusively animal-based diets don't get scurvy. One reason which is given as to why Rold Admondson beat Robert Scott to the South Pole is that Admondson learned from a previous expedition that by consuming fresh penguin meat, he and his crew were able to put off scurvy. Scott's team suffered from scurvy, which is probably a contributing factor to the failure of their mission. The vitamin C molecule was discovered in 1912, isolated in 1928, and in 1933, it became the first vitamin that was artificially produced. In 1937, Albert Sentz Gortsky was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, and Walter Norman Hallworth was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, both for their work on the

Starting point is 00:08:25 discovery of vitamin C. Today, scurvy is extremely rare, so rare that when doctors encounter it, they often misdiagnose it because they never see it in patients. However, it does occasionally occur. One such case was a teenage boy who spent weeks playing video games consuming nothing but junk food and mountain dew. Other cases have come from people who were obese, but they only consumed processed foods and no fresh foods. Scurvy is a horrible condition to suffer from. Thankfully, due to centuries of trial and error, and 20th century discoveries, we have all but eliminated it in the modern world. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel.

Starting point is 00:09:06 The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiever. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available. And if you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and get notified to future episodes and projects, please join my Facebook group or Discord server.

Starting point is 00:09:29 Links to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Scurvy (Encore)

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