SCURVY, When Medical Arrogance killed 2,000,000 men

In 1535, a sailor Jacques Cartier landed in Canada, with many ships and men. There a disease came upon the sailors. Their gums swelled up, they couldn’t eat, their teeth fell out. Their legs became purple and swollen. Many of them started hallucinating and dropped dead. Some locals also got the symptoms and they cured themselves instantly with some juice extracted from a tree called Anneda. They had known the cure for centuries. 

 Jacques Cartier distrusted the locals so much that he thought the leaves were a plot to kill his men. Days became weeks, and weeks became months. More sailors fell sick, many started having personality disorders. 

 Eventually Cartier, succumbed and allowed a few of his men to ‘try the medicine’. He wanted to check if they would be poisoned or not. To his utter surprise, they were miraculously cured. Eventually most of the entourage was treated and came back home.

Scurvy. When brawny sailors fell apart

Scurvy, as it would be called later, was a killer disease, a malady from hell that destroyed many good men in that era. It was like their bodies disintegrated, teeth fell out, gums decayed, old wounds opened up. The men had a heavy stink to them, like they were rotting inside. Eventually brain synapses would stop, destroying neurotransmitters causing loss of smell, taste and hearing. The end was ghastly.

 Strong and sturdy sailors got delirious and literally fall apart into fragments.  

 No. But wait, all this could be cured with some tree juice found Cartier. Wow that’s such a find ! yay ??

 Scurvy. Two million men gone

Cartier was overjoyed at finding a cure for the deadly disease that was so common in his tribe. He documented his findings and went around telling the whole world how the ‘Indians’ cured the sea-farers illness with just plant juice. He probably thought he would be hailed as a hero.

But no one believed his anecdotal evidence was good enough. The intellectual arrogance of the scientific community didn’t allow them to believe an unassuming tree could be a clue what to do.  No story about the sea has ever been complete without Scurvy. Scurvy would find its way into popular literature, Rime of the Ancient Mariner and also Moby Dick.

The British Royal Navy would lose 2 million men to this ‘incurable’ disease.

 Scurvy. The James Lind Experiments

Fast Forward almost 200 years, in 1747 a Scottish surgeon, James Lind, conducted some experiments in clinical nutrition and found that citrus juice was way more effective treatment for scurvy than anything else. He published a paper ‘Treatise on Scurvy’, prescribing lime juice as a cure.

(Photo Courtesy : British Institute of Naval medicine. Published in BBC. Link below)

Again, impossible said every one.  Such a gruesome disease with so many ramifications and the cure could be so simple – Just Lime juice!! What a waste of intellectual time. They said lime juice couldn’t have been it. Meanwhile, more men died at the sea.

 It would be another 50 years or so, that by some stroke of luck, the original treatise got finally accepted. It was ‘discovered’ in experiments that Vitamin C cured Scurvy. Perhaps Anneda tree was a source of vitamin C. Who knows?

The blind men of science never bothered to check.

 Scurvy. And the power of the Limeys

Eventually, British Admiralty issued an order for a mandatory supply of lime juice on ships. With this, scurvy disappeared almost completely. British royal navy got the slang of Limeys from there.

Such was the intellectual arrogance that the Portuguese and French in that era, would mock these sailors limeys, but still did not try the lime cure. It is said that the British Navy won the Napoleon wars in 1800s because their sailors were not dying of Scurvy.

Scurvy. The after thought

Much later it was discovered that scurvy attacked sailors primarily because they survived on preserved food which had zero nutrition and no vitamins. But no one really made that connection with food for 200 years.

Scurvy. The fall of arrogance

1.   Arrogance is the fall of science. Let science run its course on the path of discovery, without prejudice.

2.   Food can be medicine. Dont underestimate the importance of nutrition in disease management.

3.   When ego comes in the way of accepting ancient wisdom, centuries are lost. Some time-honored traditions might leave you and your smugness stunned.

4.   Never let intellectual pride get in the way of a good cure.

5.   Pride hath a fall. Costed 2 million men and 200 years in this story.

~ Anu

YogaSmith

Further reading for those interested in intellectual arrogance

1. Arginine, Scurvy and Cartier's "Tree of Life". https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19187550/
2. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-37320399
3. https://www.amazon.com/Limeys-Against-Ignorance-Establishment-Deadly/dp/0750927720
4. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/01/scurvy-disease-discovery-jonathan-lamb/
5. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30009083-scurvy