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This could be telling in a way though, don't you think? Scurvy is a fun example of what I mean. Most people now know that scurvy is just a disease caused by a l
by rjf72 7y ago
This could be telling in a way though, don't you think? Scurvy is a fun example of what I mean. Most people now know that scurvy is just a disease caused by a lack of vitamin c. But for centuries it was not really understood what caused it, and it has resulted in countless millions of deaths throughout the centuries. Some people would discover the cure, but it never really stuck around. Part of this is because it sounds so absurd that e.g. eating limes is a way to stop an otherwise aggressive and deadly disease. Imagine I suggested you eat apples to stave off the flu. Sounds, at best, 'folky.'
And this was also further complicated by the fact that lime juice can lose its nutritional character in some situations (such as certain sorts of storage), and so some experiments in using lime juice as a cure/prophylactic failed. It was also complicated because there's also high quantities of vitamin C in various fresh meats, and so crews that had access to these meats, but consumed minimal citrus, would also never seem to be affected. Tricky to nail down!
As a fun factoid, vitamin c is ascorbic acid, but it wasn't always called that. It was originally named hexuronic acid. It was renamed ascorbic (against scurvy) acid once it was confirmed that it was indeed absolutely what was treating and preventing scurvy. Another fun one is that this is also related to the slang term for a Brit - a 'limey'. The nickname came from the fact that the British navy was one of the first to start dosing their sailors with lemon/lime juice to ward off scurvy.
So the point of this is that if a whole bunch of people are suggesting something works, to the point of it becoming a meme, there may actually be something to it - even if it can be difficult to isolate the exact reason why, or why it may not work in 100% of cases. Definitively solving the mystery of scurvy took about 3,500 years from the point of it being formalized. So a bit of patience is probably justified for these sort of things.
- nradov 7y agoThere is no evidence for scurvy causing "millions of deaths". Thousands is more plausible.
- rjf72 7y agoI'm curious why you'd say something so completely wrong so authoritatively. Please do share your motivations and thoughts if you would. The countless deaths by scurvy are some of the most well documented there are. Especially during the age of sail death by scurvy was a regular and inevitable part of attrition. The convenient thing here is that these deaths would occur at sea, or recently at sea, and are heavily documented through captains'/physicians'/etc logs. Literally just about any captain's log from this era and an international voyage will reference large numbers of deaths from scurvy. It was a normal part of attrition. As literally every single source you might find will affirm this, I'm at a loss for what to cite. Here [1] is a source that seems well written and informative, including some of the countless first person accounts as well. You can also look up the voyages of any famous trader/explorer/voyager you might be aware of. For instance Vasco de Gama, Magellan, Columbus, etc - you'll find horrid tales of rampant scurvy when you actually look into their voyages. [1] - https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/the-age-of-scurvy https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/the-ag...
- nradov 7y agoPopulations were much smaller then, and only a small fraction of the population went on sailing voyages long enough to suffer from scurvy. So your estimate of millions of deaths from scurvy is implausible on the face of it.
- rjf72 7y agoOf course I agree with you. I was initially quite surprised to discover how many deaths it caused. It's a world we can't even imagine when good chunks of your crew dying was just a regular part of a job. But of course intuition should never replace facts. Maybe next time a more productive idea would be to ask for a source? I'm certain you're far from the only person who found the fact surprising!