Scurvy Jordan Pattison
A brief overview of scurvy
The name scurvy comes from the Latin scorbutus, humans have known about scurvy since ancient Greek and egyptian times, Scurvy is most commonly associated with sailors in the 16th -18th centuries who navigated long voyages without enough vitamin C, scurvy is very rare in the modern world.
What was known/believed about Scurvy in the past?
James Lind was a Scottish physician, he came up with a theory that citrus fruits cured scurvy. In Lind's day there was no concept of vitamins so they did not know that vitamin C cured scurvy, out of 1900 men, 1400 had died, most of them allegedly from having contracted scurvy. According to Lind, scurvy caused more deaths in the British fleets than French and Spanish arms. In the 17th century in England, it had been known that citrus fruit had a curing effect. Although Lind was not the first to suggest citrus fruit as a cure for scurvy, he was the first to study their effect by a systematic experiment in 1747. It ranks as one of the first clinical experiments in the history of medicine.
What causes it?
Scurvy is caused by a lack of vitamin C in your diet, so not eating enough oranges,strawberries,peppers,guavas,Broccoli etc... Scurvy can also be caused by dependency on alcohol or drugs, complex mental health conditions, such as severe depression or schizophrenia, pregnan...
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...w members to the disease during his famous voyage around the Cape of Good Hope in 1497.
According to legend, the island of Curacao, was founded by Portuguese crew members from the ships of Christopher Columbus who were dying of scurvy and asked to be dropped off on this island. The Portuguese, who had originally intended to die on the island as an alternative to dying at sea and being fed to the sharks, ate some of the island’s fruits and vegetables and miraculously recovered.
Around the 1700s, any seafarer knew that the chances of them returning alive wasn't high. This wasn't because he might be killed by pirates or a deadly storm, but because he might contract the dreaded scurvy.
The Europeans were said to be thoroughly diseased by the time Columbus set sail on his first voyage (Cowley, 1991). Through the domestication of such animals as pigs, horses, sheep, and cattle, the Europeans exposed themselves to a vast array of pathogens which continued to be spread through wars, explorations, and city-building. Thus any European who crossed the Atlantic was immune to such diseases as measles and smallpox because of battling them as a child.
One of the many negative effects of Columbus's expedition was the spread of diseases which his men brought over that led to genocide of the Native Americans. Native Americans became victims to the countless new diseases that Columbus and his men brought over. New diseases included smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, diphtheria, typhus, scarlet fever, yellow fever, chicken pox and more. T...
In May 1747, Dr James Lind, a Scottish physician, carried out the first ever clinical trial on twelve sailors suffering from scurvy aboard the British ship H.M.S. Salisbury. A clinical trial is an experiment performed on human beings to test out a drug or medical treatment. During this trial Dr Lind compared several treatments and noted that the use of citrus fruits brought the most effective treatment to the sailors tested. In 1757, after years of observing the preventative and curative qualities of citrus fruits and lemon juices, Dr Lind wrote a treatise recommending the regular consumption of citrus fruits and lemon juice by British sailors. Although Dr James Lind did not know the underlying reason why these fruits helped cure or potentially prevented the symptoms of scurvy, his observations lead to many sailors being saved from succumbing to scurvy. In 1795, British Navy physician, Gilbert Blane, persuaded the Admiralty to propose regulations for the universal use of citrus fruit juice as a daily ration for all sailors on board British naval vessels. After 1800, once the supply of lemon juice became more abundant, the general issue of daily rations to sailors took away the power which scurvy had held over the British
And there was Bartholomew Diaz who was also a navigator of the sea, but he was from Portugal, and the first European to round the cay of good hope in 1488.
History of St. John's Wort St. John’s Wort has been in use for about 2400 years and has been utilized for many different purposes throughout history. Some of these less modern uses have been nerve tonic, painkiller, including effectiveness for relieving arthritis pain and menstrual cramping, and relief for gastrointestinal problems such as diarrhea, nausea, and more serious problems like ulcers. Now it is becoming more common as a remedy for depression and anxiety but is simultaneously being tested as a possible type of assistance for AIDS patients because it appears to help the immune system combat viruses.
Even though pickling was used to preserve food in the ancient times and was needed in terms of survival, over the decades it has evolved into a form of art for various cultures (Kitchen Garden Harvest 1). In the past pickles have been very beneficial. As mentioned before in 1492 when traveling to the new world on the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, many crew passengers suffered from a disease called scurvy, which occurs when a lack of vitamin C is present. Amerigo Vespucci, who was Christopher Columbus’ ship stocker, loaded pickles embedded with vitamin C on to the ship because they believed that eating them would prevent the spread of scurvy (Science of Pickles 1). Here, they were able to stop this disease and this allowed for our past generation to advance by completely wiping out this disease. The phrase “in a pickle” which is figurative language for being stuck in a bad situation, was actually created by Shakespeare and used in various plays of his such as The Tempest (Science of Pickles 1). In 850 BC, Aristotle talked about the healing benefits that cured cucumbers caused (Pickle History Timeline
The people who gathered on the docks to greet the ships were met with a horrifying surprise: Most of the sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those who were still alive were gravely ill. They were overcome with fever, unable to keep food down and delirious from pain. Strangest of all, they were covered in mysterious black boils that oozed blood and pus and gave their illness its name: the “Black Death.” The Sicilian authorities hastily ordered the fleet of “death ships” out of the harbor, but it was too late: Over the next five years, the mysterious Black Death would kill more than 20 million people in Europe–almost one-third of the continent’s population.”
Pangloss simply responds that the disease was a necessity in this "the best of all possible worlds", for it was brought to Europe by Columbus’ men, who also brought chocolate and cochineal, two greater goods that well offset any negative effects of the disease. (526)The multitudes of disasters, which Candide endures, culminate in his eventual, if temporary, abandonment of optimism.
The Franciscan friar, William of Ockham who has been attributed to the principle known as Occam’s Razor which basically states that “when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better”. I could not agree more and when it comes to using plants as medicine, the simplicity of whole plant medicine cannot be replicated.
Vitamin E was discovered in 1922 , Herbert McLean Evans and Katharine Scott Bishop and first extracted in a pure form by Gladys Anderson Emerson in 1935 at University of California, Berkeley. Erhard Fernholz studied its structure in 1938 and then Paul Karrer and his team synthesized it firstly.
Homeopathy was founded by German physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), who was very concerned about the medical system of his time, believing that his cures were rudimentary and some of their strong drugs and treatments did more harm than good to patients. Hahnemann experimented himself with Peruvian bark, which contains quinine, a cure for malaria.
Vitamin C is essentially for both humans and animals to remain being healthy. In fact, when people get colds, they consume large amounts of vitamin C to try to fight off the cold. Vitamin C can be found in many fruits and veggies, buts it’s most common in oranges. A deficiency in vitamin C can cause a condition known as scurvy. Scurvy plagued sailors through the 19th century from the time of Columbus. Scurvy is characterized by blood coming out of a ruptured blood vessel, or hemorrhages, throughout the body, most especially noticeable on the gums and around the mouth and other areas of the skin that has abundant blood vessels. The only way to stop scurvy was a diet consisting of citrus fruits.
Fifth week: During this week, I will be collecting results from fourth week and will restreak the colonies into a non selective medium ( Tryptic soy agar)
A problem that we face with Vitamin C is that you have to have the right amount of it, like everything else, it has to be rationed and you have to consume the right amount in proportion to your size. It can have strong impacts on your body depending on which side of the scale it tips. For example, if you don’t have enough Vitamin C in your body, you can develop an illness called Scurvy, which results in soft, bleeding gums, bleeding under the skin and weakness. It can be deadly if not treated properly. It is very easy to treat because it is just a lack of Vitamin C, which can easily be found in citrus fruits, therefore, eating fruits and vegetables should help, but before that was discovered in 1932, a lot of sailors died because of this since on their boats/ships, they didn’t have access to fruit and vegetables.
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” - Hippocrates. This was once suggested by the idea that the best supplement man can take is obtained from their diet. Which meant he was aware that eating pineapple which is rich in bromelain, is an anti-inflammatory that can help reduce swelling and even help speed up the healing process of a surgery, and also that consuming tahina which contains lysine helps heal cold sores, and even that drinking Green tea is rich in antioxidants, which help protect one from sunburns. This and many other nutritional values have disappeared in history as time and technology advances. Instead, people are misinformed by large companies that the best remedy for man, is made in a lab. This is accomplished