The Lost Cure for Scurvy

We know that scurvy is a disease caused by lack of vitamin C. In the Middle Ages, ship captains knew that fresh fruit, particularly citrus, would fend off scurvy, which had been the scourge of long sea voyages. Scottish physician James Lind uncovered the citrus cure scientifically in 1747, but vitamin C was still unknown. In 1799, all British Royal Navy ships were ordered to serve lemon juice, but in time the method of preventing scurvy was changed until it was no longer effective, and no one knew why.

It fell to the unfortunate George Nares to discover this fact in 1875, when he led the British Arctic Expedition in an attempt to reach the North Pole via Greenland. Some oceanographic theories of the time posited an open polar sea, and Nares was directed to sail along the Greenland coast, then take a sledging party and see how far north he could get on the pack ice.

The expedition was a fiasco. Two men in the sledging party developed scurvy within days of leaving the ship. Within five weeks, half the men were sick, and despite having laid depots with plentiful supplies for their return journey, they were barely able to make it back. A rescue party sent to intercept them found that lime juice failed to have its usual dramatic effect. Most damning of all, some of the men who stayed on the ship, never failing to take their daily dose, also got scurvy.

Afterward, some doctors thought scurvy must be due to food poisoning or even a contagious infection. Vitamin C was finally isolated in 1932. The tragic story of how the cure for scurvy was lost and then found again is detailed in a fascinating article at Idle Words. Link -via Metafilter

(image credit: Flickr user Paul Denton Cocker)

The linked article is significantly incorrect in attributing the 're-discovery' of scurvy to Nares' 1875 expedition. Early Arctic and Antarctic expeditions had been plagued by scurvy (most of the ships that went looking for the Franklin Expedition in the 1850s suffered from scurvy to a greater or lesser degree).

The key was not of itself the substitution of limes for lemons, but rather the preservation of them. Fresh lemons or limes were boiled, sugared and canned/bottled for long journeys, significantly reducing the vitamin C content (Roses' Lime Cordial is the product of a particular patent process for this). It would further degrade on storage, leaving the sailors with a progressively deteriorating condition in the ice.

Because lemon juice was so unreliable many Captains had their own 'cures' for scurvy (recorded in their accounts of their voyages). Two notable ones were whale skin and sauerkraut - both of which have a good vitamin C content. These were never scientifically tested, but stumbled on in practice (and lacking the science were never enforced in the way citrus was).