The
word scurvy may make you think of pirates and sailors on long sea
voyages, but “land scurvy” affected many European Crusaders who spent
months trudging through the Middle East. In 1747, Scottish physician
James Lind found that oranges and lemons could cure scurvy, but that
didn’t help all sailors.
The British establishment grasped onto the concept of
citrus, and then did it really really wrong. First, they substituted
cheap and easy to get limes – readily available from British holdings in
the Caribbean – for the more effective lemons or oranges. Then they
further boiled the limes in copper vessels, which had the non-helpful
side effect of reducing the (thus far unknown) Vitamin C content even
further.
People began to suspect that maybe this whole citrus thing was not
as effective as it had been claimed. Of course by then steam engines in
ships brought the age of sail and voyages of longer than 6 weeks to an
end. Semi-success-via-roundabout-ways!
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