Aboard one of His Majesty’s ships, a British doctor begins clinical testing that will uncover the cause of scurvy and lead to its cure.
Scurvy was the sailor’s scourge: fatigue, anemia, swollen and bleeding gums, loose teeth, slow-healing wounds, and subcutaneous hemorrhaging. It often proved fatal to sailors a long way from shore.
Though the disease had been documented since the Crusades, its precise cause (a vitamin deficiency) would remain a mystery until vitamin C was discovered. Sailing ships had fruits and vegetables in their stores, but without refrigeration (see here), they had to be eaten early in the voyage. As European empires expanded, voyages lengthened, and scurvy cases increased.
Royal Navy surgeon James Lind had a hunch that diet was involved, and he put his theory to the test when he shipped aboard the Salisbury. Taking a dozen men stricken with scurvy, Lind divided them into six groups of two and administered specific dietetic supplements to each group. The two lucky sailors who were fed lemons and oranges for six days recovered, and one was even declared fit for duty before the Salisbury reached port.
The Royal Navy was slow to react to Lind’s evidence, though Captain James Cook is credited with mitigating scurvy by careful management of his crews’ diets. It would take nearly half a century before the Admiralty accepted Lind’s findings and began issuing lemon or lime juice to its sailors as a standard ration.
When that happened, scurvy all but vanished from the fleet. And British sailors (and Brits in general) came to be known as limeys.—TL