Scurvy History and Facts

It nice to know real scurvy history, which before was known as sailor’s or pirate’s disease.

What is scurvy disease?

Scurvy disease caused by deficiency of Vitamin C. It is required for the development collagen. Vitamin is very essential in daily diet. It keeps human body healthy and enables body functions to work well and fight against different diseases.

Every vitamin plays a vital role in human body. vitamin C also plays an important role and helping us to prevent lot of diseases. The deficiency of vitamin c causes person to have skin disorders, pain in different body parts, fatigue, swollen gums with bleeding, redness in eyes.

Loss of teeth and red spots on skin. Patients with scurvy often report loss of appetite and they find it difficult to increase weight, they are usually depressed and have mood disorders. Vitamin C intake is the solution for scurvy and it is its prevention.

Vitamin C is rich in fresh fruits and vegetables like oranges, kiwi, strawberries, guava, spinach, cauliflower, and bell pepper. Other way to prevent is to take vitamin C in supplements and in medicine form.

History of scurvy disease

History of scurvy disease is pretty big, at past days it killed few millions peoples around the world and at that time doctors not have idea what it connected with vitamin c deficiency inside the human body.

An ancient scurvy disease caused by the lack of ascorbic acid or due to deficiency of vitamin C. In past when scurvy disease spread in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, they took it as plague. They had no idea that scurvy disease has a connection with insufficient diet.

The course of history was deeply influenced by scurvy. It was a major problem for the countries military. As military had to refugee, or stay away for training or voyage for a longer period, away from high nutrient die especially food with vitamins. 50 percent of the soldiers were infected with scurvy during 1556-1857.

Even though many time the link of this disease was made with diet disorders. Many studies were done to insure this link was right reason for this disease.

One fact from scurvy history is James Lind in 1742 requested British army and navy to provide them with critic food doing voyages. He discovered the lime or lemon juice to be the best cure of scurvy and explained it as a blessing of God.

The British army ignored this request of Lind, but later, almost after 62 years Captain Cook found this advice as fruitful, they really used this miracle and they got themselves cure.

In 1907, when two German scientist discovered that scurvy disease is also found in guinea pig. This study discovered the vitamin C importance in this disease.

Vasco de Gama during his voyage to East Indies in 1497 lost 100 men because of scurvy. In 1519, Magellan started his journey with five ships but after three year, he returned to Spain with 18 sailors on one ship, rest all died due to scurvy.

History of naval army was full of miseries during eighteenth century due to this disease. Many famous captains lost their fame. Later many captain started to value the fresh food. Many planned a stopover voyage.

In history, voyage of Captain Cook 1772-1775 was rewarded with Copley Medal of Royal society. His success was based on the returned of the numbers of sailors as same as departed number. He provided his crew with fresh food along with critic food availability to his crew and it prevented scurvy disease.

As navy, land army was also infected with scurvy during sixteenth to eighteenth century. It infected the Prussian armies; Russians army also was infected with war against Turks. In addition, British army has scurvy disease problem in 1959 in Quebec.

With the discovery of vitamin C, in 1748, by James Lind made the scurvy treatment really easy task. Before his retirement proved the lemons and oranges are the remedies for the scurvy. Lord Nelson provided his army with fresh fruits and vegetables and maintains their health, and this made him Napoleon to face a downfall.

Unlike the history, today’s world is more secure with scurvy disease due to medical facilities and inventions of medicines that keeps them healthy.

That is real scurvy history and it reminder us about importance of diet and fresh vegetables and fruits.