Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail

by Stephen R. Bown

Scurvy took a terrible toll in the Age of Sail, killing more sailors than were lost in all sea battles combined. The threat of the disease kept ships close to home and doomed those vessels that ventured too far from port. The willful ignorance of the royal medical elite, who endorsed ludicrous medical theories based on speculative research while ignoring the life-saving properties of citrus fruit, cost tens of thousands of lives and altered the course of many battles at sea. The cure for scurvy ranks among the greatest of human accomplishments, yet its impact on history has, until now, been largely ignored.

From the earliest recorded appearance of the disease in the sixteenth century, to the eighteenth century, where a man had only half a chance of surviving the scourge, to the early nineteenth century, when the British conquered scurvy and successfully blockaded the French and defeated Napoleon, Scurvy is a medical detective story for the ages, the fascinating true story of how James Lind (the surgeon), James Cook (the mariner), and Gilbert Blane (the gentleman) worked separately to eliminate the dreaded affliction.

Scurvy is an evocative journey back to the era of wooden ships and sails, when the disease infiltrated every aspect of seafaring press gangs "recruit" mariners on the way home from a late night at the pub; a terrible voyage in search of riches ends with a hobbled fleet and half the crew heaved overboard; Cook majestically travels the South Seas but suffers an unimaginable fate. Brimming with tales of ships, sailors, and baffling bureaucracy, Scurvy is a rare mix of compelling history and classic adventure story.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Medicine, Medical, Microhistory, Maritime

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2003

About the author

www.stephenrbown.net
www.facebook.com/srbown

Winner of the 2024 Governor General's History Award for Popular Media: the Pierre Berton Award

I am a popular historian and author of 12 works of literary non-fiction on Canadian and international topics. I have also written more than 20 feature magazine articles highlighting lesser-known characters and events in Canadian history. I strive to make the past accessible, meaningful, and entertaining by applying a narrative and immersive style to my writing, which blends story-telling with factual depth.

My recent best-selling books The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire and Dominion: The Railway and the Rise of Canada offer fresh perspectives on Canada's foundational stories by casting a broader lens on events of the day and highlighting characters who were not previously part of the dominant narrative. My work has been recognized for enriching public discourse and creating a lasting impact on how Canadians view and understand our shared history.

The Company won the 2021 National Business Book Award and the J.W. Dafoe Book Prize. I also won the BC Book Prize for Madness, Betrayal and the Lash: The Epic Voyage of Captain George Vancouver, the Alberta Book Award for Island of the Blue Foxes: Disaster and Triumph on Bering's Great Voyage to Alaska and the William Mills Prize for Polar Books for White Eskimo: Knud Rasmussen's Fearless Journey into the Heart of the Arctic.

"Learning from the past isn't about judging the past by modern standards, or agreeing or disagreeing with the actions or decisions of historical characters. It is about understanding the challenges and struggles of past people within the context of their times, technology, education and infrastructure and state capacity to solve problems. In other words, it involves learning about and considering the good, the bad, and the ugly of the past in its full context, the way a visitor might explore a foreign country, open-minded to the differences from their own culture and experience.

Knowing how we came to be where we are as a nation - the choices made by people in the past - should be about understanding our origins, not glorifying or denigrating them. To deny knowledge and remain ignorant is an abrogation of responsibility that paves the way for future failure. Gaining knowledge of our shared history builds a sense of community and inoculates us against agenda-driven distortions of facts and events."

I live in a small town in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. When I'm not writing I'm usually reading, mountain biking, hiking and camping in the summer, and downhill and cross country skiing in the winter.

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can honestly say--this is the best book on scurvy I have ever read.

Well, that's just a ringing endorsement, isn't it?

This book is fine. It's dandy. If you read one book on scurvy this year, this should be it.

There are times when you read a book and you think "hmmm, the author didn't really have enough info for a book, did he?"

It's 229 pages, and those pages contain lots of random images poorly reproduced. Why in a book about scurvy do you need to reproduce an image of Napoleon crowning Josephine? How does this image add to my understanding of scurvy?

Answer: It doesn't.

However, the book told me a lot of things I didn't know about scurvy...like how it actually worked and the effort it took just to figure out how to prevent, which the naval officials promptly forgot and then had to learn all over again.

The author REALLY liked Dr. Lind, who did the first "study" on scurvy. I'm not sure I share his admiration, but it's abundantly clear the author admires. OMIGOD HE ADMIRES.

It's a quick read (especially with all the pictures) and I won't judge you harshly if I see you reading it in a coffee shop. That copy you have of Twillight though, COMPLETELY OTHER STORY.

[Richard Derus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Real Rating: 1.5* of five

DNF @ 18%

I'm callin' it. No more. I KNOW THAT ASCORBIC ACID IS THE ANSWER IT'S THE 21ST GODDAMNED CENTURY so tell me how people who *couldn't* have known it was ascorbic acid firgured it out without saying it's ascorbic acid EVERY MOTHERFUCKIN PAGE. Cartier could've saved tens of thousands of lives with the white-cedar bar tea discovery. Boo hiss on him for not doing it.

The full star is for the subject of the book causing me to learn that scurvy is on the raise among gastric-bypass surgery recipients. And the Cartier discovery, I'd never heard of that or the Iroquois possessing the secret before now.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am so glad I never had to sail long distances in the 17th century, because scruvy was really, awfully, horribly bad, and if you were a sailor in the 17th century, chances were, you'd probably get it. But, as fate would have it: Mystery solved! Suck enough lemons and you'll never get scurvy! I loved this book for its seafaring history and the random asides about the origins of certain words that we would normally just not associate with seafaring--quick examples: "pressed into service," "slush fund," and "giving someone a start." Gee Whiz. Who knew? I love that sort of OED stuff. But the main focus of the book, the discovery of the cause of scurvy, is a remarkable medical detective story in itself. So, avast ye, matey, and go suck a lemon.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

After hearing a great deal about Stephen R. Bown, I decided to start one of his earlier books. In this piece, Bown explores that dreaded ailment that took hold of many sailors on the high seas. Scurvy was known to take down a number of men as they crossed various bodies of water, likely tied to their diet. However, looking at what was available in large quantities and could be used during regular voyages, various Royal surgeons had been tasked with trying to solve the issue, only to fail miserably. It was three men, working independently, who discovered a way to eradicate it. Bown takes the reader down the rabbit holes of scurvy’s arrival, destructive nature, and the rush to solve it, also in an effort to solve the issue and rid the high seas of this painful sickness. Brilliant and entertaining in all its delivery, Bown keeps the reader engaged through this piece of scientific history telling.

Stephen R. Bown tackles this intriguing exploration into the malady of scurvy, which took the lives of more sailors than those who died in battle during the height of time on the seas. The lack of Vitamin C in the diet of ship crews could paralyse the departure of boats filled with items, or devastate those who had drifted too far from port, thereby ruining shipping lines and acquisition of products from country to country. While many in the medical world posited many outlandish solutions--blood letting, heightened salt consumption, and surgery--they ignored the basics related to citrus fruits, which was readily available in most parts of the world. As Bown explores, royal surgeons were amongst those who 'missed the boat' on this diagnosis, which thereby delayed progress or any eradication of scurvy, and led to the  stoppage of shipping goods, freezing economic progress at a time where boats were the only means of getting products across parts of the world.

It took three men to tackle the issues or scurvy on their own, which helped end its impact. James Lind, a surgeon who had seen many troubling cases of scurvy during his various trips with sailors, noticed how eating things like lemons and limes, as well as sauerkraut, could help many keep the disease at bay. Lind sought to study this, sometimes in passing and at other times by leading experimentation. At the same time, James Cook served as a sailor who saw the same things amongst his shipmates and sought to ensure his own diet was high in citrus fruits, noticing his own health increasing while he was on the open seas. Finally, Gilbert Blane was a man of some regard, yet did not serve on the open seas. He noticed crews and their sicknesses, while also seeing what they had on board during their trips. Could health be tied to alleviating scurvy? Might the means of treating the sick help stop its spread? This and many other issues were tackled by all three men, under the auspices of Britain, which helped the country get a handle on things for their own sailors.

As Bown explores the heart of the book, Britain being able to tackle scurvy would help in other regards. When raising a defence on the High Seas against the French, the Brits could keep scurvy from paralysing their sailors and thereby ensure proper defense against attacks. Napoleon did not have the knowledge or understanding needed, which caused the French Navy to lose out and suffer massive losses. As Bown posits, this could have helped explain Britain's superiority on the seas and thereby ensured it would provide ongoing power when waves crashed against the hull. Scurvy, while not a biological weapon, proved a crippling disease that one country could use to weaken another when the time was right!

I have long enjoyed learning about the history of events and situations for which I have never given a second thought. Stephen R. Bown lays the table with a great story that keeps the reader keenly aware of how scurvy came to pass, its crippling effects, and how it was handled, both with success and outright ignorance. Bown uses his chapters to push the story forward, peppering in great revelations at key moments and educating the reader effectively. I could not have asked for more out of this book, which had me saying 'aha' on more occasions than many around me would have liked. The book explores a time when wooden ships and sails were all over the waters and every sailor was susceptible to disease wherever they turned. Solving the disease took serious thought and dedication, which Bown explores repeatedly. I have other books by Stephen R. Bown on my radar and will be looking into them sooner than later, as the buzz I feel is surely well worth some added impetus. 

Kudos, Mr. Bown, for this sickeningly-great piece of writing.

Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at: http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/

[Trina · Rating 3 out of 5]

About halfway through, I started wondering if I have scurvy. Maybe I should stop reading books like this. And eat some broccoli.

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

The social, political and economic effects of curing the Vitamin C deficiency disease Scurvy during the Age of Sail.


Idealized picture of man-of-war, “cockpit” (sick bay) and scurvy palliative care

My dead tree version was a modest 254-pages. It had a 2003 US copyright.

Steven R. Brown is a Canadian author of non-fiction. He’s written more than ten books. This is the first book I’ve read by the author.

Note that some familiarity with maritime history, particularly the Royal Navy during of the Age of Sail, and with sailing ships of the period would be helpful, but was not completely necessary.

TL:DR Synopsis

This book was a somewhat patchy description of the mainly British efforts to cure the disease Scurvy during The Age of Sail (1571 - 1862) with the available medical knowledge and technology. The military, diplomatic and economic effects of the disease were described. The effect of British societal values on arriving at a cure were also covered. The book ends in 1795 when preventative nutritional changes were made to Royal Navy sailor's diets. These changes eventually spread to the merchant marine and then other countries.

The Review

The book includes: maps, pictures, two appendices, a bibliography and an index. The maps and pictures were well chosen. The bibliography contained solid English-language maritime history references. The book's prose was generally clear and concise. Although, I found it to be somewhat repetitive and containing a lot of extraneous material.

The author hangs the narrative on three (3), British notables of the period: James Lind (1716 – 1794) Naval surgeon and physician, Captain James Cook (1728 – 1779) Explorer, and Sir Gilbert Blane (1749 – 1834) Physician. I found the selection of these characters to be peculiar, particularly Lind and Cook. Only particular sections of their careers related to the disease were needed. Unfortunately, the reader was ‘treated’ to mini-biographies. In addition, I found the book to be: weak on the modern, scientific, nature of the disease; strong on the early theories of medicine and their failings; good on the organizational behavior of the British Royal Navy for the period; good on the operation of British society on the period; and overly involved in the maritime events of the period. For example, I didn’t find a blow-by-blow of Nelson’s battle of Trafalgar was needed to seal one of the author’s points.

For centuries during the Age of Sail, the typical common sailor's meal was: boiled beef (or pork), biscuit and water. These staple foods were stored in wooden barrels in the ship's hold until needed. The barrel's contents: quality, age, and storage conditions could vary widely. Spoilage was a given. The stored meat rations were preserved in brine. It was rinsed and boiled in less salty seawater until eatable for serving. The 'biscuit' was the bread ration. It was a large, hard baked, cracker very similar to a modern dog biscuit. It was made more for long-term storage than taste. Water was from natural sources, unfiltered or boiled before stored. During a long voyage of months or years these stored food and drink could reach a state of scarcely being eatable or drinkable. Meal portions of this monotonous diet were calorically sufficient for hard, physical labor, but nutritionally deficient by any modern standard.

Scurvy is a deficiency disease. Human beings and a very few animals don’t produce ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) naturally. They get it from food. It’s present in varying concentrations in both and certain plants and animal organs. However, ascorbic acid from natural sources is fragile. It does not store well, it quickly degrades, and it can be destroyed by cooking. The human body also stores ascorbic acid. Depending on the circumstances it has several weeks of reserves. All human societies have overtime developed a ‘normal’ diet to contain a ‘maintenance level’ of ascorbic acid. If the reserves can’t be refreshed, humans will sicken and even die. The later stages of the disease are gruesome. Scurvy has always been present in human societies. It typically appears in the extended aftermath of disaster, and extreme situations such as war. Any situation where a ‘normal diet’ is difficult or can’t be maintained for several weeks. It was only in the early 1900’s that ascorbic acid's role in the body was understood. In addition, the synthesis of synthetic ascorbic acid was developed shortly after that. This created a: cheap, easy to use, shelf-stable, vitamin supplement, food additive to prevent the disease.

Scurvy in the book was restricted to a certain vocation and class of people. It was “The Mariner’s Disease”. During The Age of Sail ocean going vessels finally became capable enough for months long voyages and spending extended period’s at-sea for military duties like blockades. During the early and mid-years of the period there were only, primitive food preservation techniques, and no understanding of ‘deficiency diseases’. The elusive and perishable nature of ascorbic acid made scurvy endemic in merchant and naval sailor populations. In general, those centuries: food technology, old ways of thought, and traditions resulted on in hundreds of thousands of maritime deaths from scurvy. To a greater or lesser extent history was affected by these deaths. However, I doubt to the extent to which the author describes.

My largest take-aways from the story were that the medical profession with the available science and technology could not deal with a ‘deficiency disease’. The other was, that the neglect built-into the British class-system of the Royal Navy caused hundreds of thousands of needless deaths in the effected 'lower' class.

During the Age of Sail, the medical profession was still paying heed to texts from the Greek and Roman eras. The ‘Scientific Method’ had only a weak influence on medical practitioners. Aegrescit medendo, (The remedy (cure) is worse than the disease) was also the case. In addition, modern concepts like ‘preventative medicine’ and ‘deficiency diseases’ did not exist. They were not part of the model with which physicians were trained to diagnose and cure diseases. Further confusing the matter was, scurvy was frequently mis-diagnosed for the myriad other diseases arising from harsh shipboard life. Available information on any treatment was little better than hearsay. In many cases physician ‘cults of personality’ set treatments, not all of them correct-- many of them harmful. Effective preventative (antiscorbutics) and palliative care for scurvy was ‘chanced upon’ several times, and discarded several times before it was institutionalized in the British navy and large merchant fleets. That was only possible when a predecessor generation of influential British physicians left practice and public life in the 1780’s.

The largest population effected by scurvy during the early and mid-period of the Age of Sail were the ordinary sailors of the sea faring nation states. The largest of these were: Spain, France, England and Portugal. The book's narrative mainly uses English sources, although examples from other navies were given. Navies, particularly during wartime were great consumers of seaman. Men-of-war were complicated, high maintenance weapons. Trained naval and merchant marine sailors were a scarce resource. Oddly, for almost the entire Age of Sail, particularly during wartime, naval sailors were held as human chattel. In the Royal Navy, “Our people are our most important asset”, only applied to the ‘well-born’ and particularly the wealthy, officer class. It should be noted that officers at sea, suffered from scurvy less than sailors due to: a more varied diet, less physical labor and stress, and more hygienic accommodations. Antiscorbutics that were cheap, easy to prepare, and could be stored indefinitely, like cannon balls, delayed their introduction for centuries by the Admiralty, the Royal Navy's leadership.

It was only during the Napoleonic Wars, that things changed. The Royal Navy’s war fighting capability was critically hampered due to its traditional, heavy losses to disease. The changes in naval warfare during the global, Napoleonic Wars consumed enormous amounts of sailors. Ships were at sea for longer than ever before. More sailors traditionally perished to disease than enemy action. Perversely, navies over-manned their ships to account for the attrition by disease. The naval leadership was solving the manning problem, not its cause. The unhygienic and crowded conditions of shipboard, abetted the spread of contagious diseases (unlike scurvy) causing further attrition. During the the Napoleonic Wars, sailors had finally become more expensive than the cost of: lemons, oranges and limes, the most potent antiscorbutics. The Admiralty found the political will to change centuries-old traditions and the education of surgeons (shipboard doctors) to adopt a large-scale cure to scurvy. Use of which eventually became universal on merchant and naval vessels.

As an aside, during the Napoleonic war, the arrived upon preventative measure for scurvy was to mix the antiscorbutic lemon juice sourced from the Mediterranean into the sailor’s, daily, alchohol ration (grog). This ensured they would drink it. After the war, less expensive and less effective lime juice sourced from the British West Indies was substituted. (Limes contain less Vitamin C than lemons.) Hence. British sailors being called, "Limeys".

In the Epilogue, Brown describes that it took almost another hundred years after the adoption of antiscorbutics for medical science to understand the mechanism by which they worked. Today, with better methods of food preservation, and availability of a cheap, synthetic antiscorbutic used as a prepared food additive, scurvy is now very rare.

This book was well written, but was not well organized. It went longer than it ought. The technique of hanging the narrative was on historical figures, and the lengthy descriptions of voyages of exploration and naval battles strayed very far from the subject of The Conquest of Disease. This modest volume could have been half its length with strict editing. I was disappointed that the great majority of sources for the book was mainly the Royal Navy. I'm sure there was a lot of non-English material on the subject that could have contributed to a better narrative. The story would also have been better concentrating on: the period’s physicians medical dogma leaving them unprepared to treat a disease arising from a crucial change in worldwide transportation and trade, and the British Admiralty’s, class and false economies-based lack of regard for a minority crucial to their warfighting mission squandered thousands of lives and at times threatened The Empire. Still, the book wasn’t that long, and it did appeal to my interest in: military history, maritime history, and epidemiological history.

If you’re interested in a similarly themed book, I recommend, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
(1997) .

[Maureen Grigsby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good grief, scurvy sounds AWFUL

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so interesting! No just about scurvy, but how medicine was practiced from the 15th-19th centuries and how dumbassed everyone was in regards to treating this horrible disease. I actually didn't realise how horrible it was - pretty much the body falls apart from the inside out as vitamin c is used to make collagen, so lack of vitamin c in diet = no collagen, and thus nothing can be kept together. Even old broken bones sometimes re-break! D:

[Jessica Halleck · Rating 5 out of 5]

4-4.5 stars

A very readable account of a disease that once baffled and crippled humanity, and whose cure literally shaped history. Also a clever snapshot into the attitudes and politics of a pre-scientific method society hobbled by the pride of the class system and a good old boy network of influence.

Well done. If you, like me, aren't an academic but have a soft spot for interesting moments in medical history, Scurvy will be right up your alley.

[Brad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I spent my entire time reading Stephen R. Bown's Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail trying to figure out how to turn it into an HBO prestige mini-series in the spirit of From the Earth to the Moon or Band of Brothers.

I even think I could do it.

But that's not at all about my skill. It is entirely about how compelling Bown's tale of the search for an answer to scurvy is.

Scurvy is, you see, one of the nastiest things to prey upon humanity. Ascorbic acid isn't a problem for most species on Earth; they make it within their bodies, but great apes (including humans), bats, capyberas, and guinea pigs have to get their ascorbic acid from outside sources. And if we few species don't get it, we are fucked. Our old injuries come back to haunt us: healed broken bones unknit, gums soften then give up their teeth, old scars reopen (inside or outside the body), lethargy and depression dominate our waking hours, and we can't sleep because insomnia sets in, our skin becomes mottled and riddled with pustules, and our organs shut down until we die. Scurvy is nasty.

But scurvy isn't a virus or a bacteria. It is a disease of malnutrition. It is a lack of antiscorbutics, a lack of ascorbic acid, a lack of vitamin C. It seems so simple to solve, doesn't it? Yet for hundreds of years the solution was a mystery. Then, when the solution presented itself, when a Naval Surgeon discovered the importance of citrus fruit, the solution was overwhelmed by patronage and the class system and prestige -- at the cost of tens of thousands of lives.

And scurvy's influence on the world's navies may also have been just as influential on the state of the world at large. Scurvy influenced revolutions and wars and trade. Scurvy, once upon a time, was the world's most horrifying killer. We like to think it is gone, but wherever there is malnutrition, scurvy is right there waiting to rear its nastiness.

Now ... Bown doesn't just make all of these competing concepts clear and compelling, he elevates the search for a cure to scurvy and all the follies that held that cure back to the level of heroism & tragedy. And maybe that is why my brain went to an HBO prestige mini-series. I can see Bown's absolutely true tale populated by all the finest Commonwealth actors: Paul Bettany as Blane; Cumberbatch as Pringle; maybe Aidan Turner as Lind; and one of the Hemsworths as Cook.

I want to write that show, produce that show, direct that show, but I want to do it because Bown deserves the love for what he has done. It is a history, yes. But it one of the most compelling histories I have ever read. And I want everyone to find their way to Scurvy. Damn, does Bown deserve it.

(and I haven't even mentioned the counter-factual writing prompts!)

READ THIS BOOK

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it. A great history, a la "Guns, Germs, and Steel" yet a quick read, approachable, and some neat facts about the age of sail. The only downside is that now I am convinced that I am going to get scurvy.

[Hapaxes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting but very repetitive.

The book seemed to be self published, the editing was horrible. The number of typos was distracting, it seemed to have been simply run through a spell check, most of the errors would have made it through a spell check, but would have be caught easily by a human proofreader. I caught a couple factual errors, the biggest of which was that Napoleon wasn't "diminutive" he was average height for an European of his era. The book is very Anglo-centric, the author missed the opportunity to cover the subject from the perspective of other countries, and the issue (or non-issue) of scurvy in non-European countries was never discussed.

[Erin Weigel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wish he would have spent more time writing about scurvy and less repetitive detail about the age of sail. I was hoping for even more interesting medical science, but all in all was a decent read for a book about scurvy. Some interesting and shocking facts about the prevalence of the disease and all the crazy reasons people assumed were the cause. Thankful I missed that part of history. Sounded miserable!

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Umm, I thought this was really informative and insightful. Predictably, it was written about England and the Royal Navy, as they were the first leaders to prescribe a regimen of lemon juice to their military sailorfolk.

I found the most interesting and enlightening part to be the description of the cultural milieu in which these researches (when they happened) took place. For context, we're talking solidly about the early-to-mid 18th century, though scurvy was problematic as early as Columbus' voyages to America and rampant among Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and British sailors, as well.

The book highlighted the historical and significant difference between physicians and surgeons: physicians were most likely landed and well-to-do, whose knowledge of the body was more theoretical. Their medical treatises were more philosophical than anything else, and you had physicians writing treatises on scurvy that had never seen a patient with scurvy. The worst part of it was, due to a given social standing, that was the degree to which he was listened. So, you had people prescribing malt wort and rum as treatments, when there was no evidence of either helping. Combine that with the leaders in the Royal Navy, who wanted the easy and inexpensive "cure," and the result is that nearly half of your ship's sailors die of scurvy.

Surgeons were working-class, as they actually treated people, sailed on ships, and got their hands dirty. "Scurvy" drove home for me the importance of the Age of Reason and why the scientific method was such a Big Deal in Europe. In the 18th century, physicians still said diseases were caused by an imbalance in the four humours (Greek! ideas). The first person, James Lind, who investigated scurvy, actually had the beginnings of a controlled experiment, giving afflicted sailors different cures and seeing who got better (and who died -- the 1747 ethics of this are defs suspect by modern standards).

The part about James Cook was cool, and yikes Blaine. Again, he waited until the head of the Royal Society had died (Pringle) in order to say that lemons were indeed what cured scurvy. I was appreciative that Brown put in context the magnitude of what scurvy cost: I forget the actual numbers, but it was some astronomical numbers of sailors who had scurvy. They'd double the load of military ships figuring half would either die of or be incapacitated with scurvy at any given time. Thus, whoever solved the problem of scurvy first would have a major competitive advantage in terms of both military and mercantile influence. It's a tenuous claim, but Brown figures the American Revolution succeeded in large part due to scurvy-ridden British sailors; Britain won the Napoleonic Wars a few decades later due to their better navy and non-scorbutic sailors.

I also have a better understanding of why scurvy was so pernicious to understand. It isn't caused because of something; rather, it's a disease of deficiency. I appreciated that Brown included a study done in the early 20th century by Norwegians Holst and Frolich on guinea pigs (by a stroke of luck, only the Family that includes guinea pigs and Primates can't create ascorbic acid). I sympathize with those early doctors trying to understand what it was and isolate its causes, when it was also accompanied by so many other diseases due to damp and crowded ship conditions.

It killed me to hear about Jacques Cartier's expedition in 1535. They got iced-in on the St. Lawrence near present-day Quebec City. Their crew was decimated by starvation and scurvy. They had a Huron person named Agaya with them, who was able to procure a remedy from a local Huron tribe made out of white cedar (arborvitae). That they blithely took the cure and carried on back to France once the river thawed out was absolutely mind-boggling to me. Here was what appeared to be a miracle cure, and yet they didn't want to reproduce and share it.

This is also a read for covid times. Scurvy was an epidemic: because people in power didn't see it or its effects, they could pretend it wasn't happening, or a fact of life. I feel that this is exactly what is happening with covid: medical professionals see it and its effects, but the general public -- and for so long those who have power to do something -- were blasé about it.

I have a lot to say about this book, and I feel like a learned a lot. Some of it was repetitive; I'm okay not hearing the word "scorbutic" for a very, very long time. But, it was an absolutely fascinating book, if dry at times, and I liked the glimpse Brown gave us into the daily life and conditions of sailors during the Age of Sail. Listen to / read it yourself.

**I listened to the audiobook, and the quality wasn't great. It sounded like they took it from a cassette: there were squeaky whirs that sounded like birds or crickets. Upping the playback speed (1.3 for me) made that negligible. And, the narrator, Dan Cashew, though he is like a discount Jim Cummings, has awkward pauses, which a higher playback also improved.

[Lorie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this historical account of the history of scurvy. The nurse in me loved the medical information and the descriptions of the time, place, situation etc. Great information, but I was beginning to wonder how long it was going to take for someone to figure out how to cure scurvy. Even when faced with practically irrefutable evidence towards the cure they still made the wrong choice. I was waiting on pins and needles to see if/when they would get their heads together and figure this out. Well just in case you don’t know how this ends I won’t ruin it for you. Drink your orange juice my book loving friends.

Xtra info - I listened to part of this on audiobook because I was traveling during the Thanksgiving Holiday. If you happen to have tween/teen kids within earshot they do say the word “seamen” quite often. For me it did illicit a few laughs and a little vocabulary lesson. :D

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is meant to be an entertaining and informative read and it delivers. Bown always keeps his audience in mind so the book never gets weighed down like a text book. Bown does a great job of giving context to the different historical figures and their contribution to the unraveling of the scurvy mystery. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

[Carl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horrifying yet fascinating history of how lemons helped defeat Napoleon, but it took 200 years and 2 million lives to figure out the ancients didn't know better.

[Aspasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This blog post has a different format and style of writing than my regular posts- this an academic book review my class was assigned for the Golden Age of Piracy course that I'm taking this summer. It's long, but bear with me, I think you'll enjoy it!

In Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2003), Stephen R. Bown follows the convoluted history of the cure for scurvy during the Age of Sail (1700-1850) in Britain. Scurvy was eradicated after decades of conflicting research and bureaucratic red tape, courtesy of the British Admiralty. Ridding the British Navy of scurvy helped strengthen Britain’s economy as it entered the Industrial Revolution (198):
“The defeat of scurvy, and the concomitant increase in the time ships could spend at sea, was … the keystone in construction of the British-dominated global trade and communication network that flourished throughout the nineteenth century” (208).

Chapters are organized chronologically with the first two chapters giving the readers background information on the seafaring world and scurvy. Detailed descriptions of the horrible and unsanitary conditions that sailors suffered through while engaging in a dangerous occupation is blended with the history of scurvy and the symptoms and effects, physically and economically of this disease. The third chapter explains George Anson’s voyage to the South Seas, the greatest medical maritime disaster of all time, and how this disaster “was the beginning of a golden age of scurvy research… and raised public awareness of the social cost of scurvy” (68). Chapters 5, 7, and 8 focus on key historical figures that were monumental in the fight against scurvy: James Lind (the surgeon mentioned in the book’s subtitle), James Cook (the mariner) and Gilbert Blane (the gentleman). Each of these three gentleman used their experiences and social standing to further the cause and journey of scurvy research and a cure, with varying results. Other chapters explain debate in scientific and naval circles over citrus rob versus wort of malt as cures for scurvy.
Bown introduces and sets the book’s tone with a horrific, detailed description of the physical symptoms of scurvy suffered by thousands of sailors for centuries. Not only did scurvy affect the sailors and crew of the British Navy, but this preventable disease had disastrous social consequences for British citizens and the economy. This insidious disease killed over two million sailors, “more than storms, shipwreck, combat and all other diseases combined” (3).
Throughout the book, Bown intertwines narrative with scientific data to create an intriguing look at one of history’s most mysterious yet, preventable, illnesses. Primary sources such as, memoirs, journals, and casualty lists, were cited to describe personal accounts of ship life and the effects of scurvy from a sailor or surgeon’s point of view. Bown also used secondary sources to supplement his narrative: recorded folk cures for scurvy, histories on food and food preservation, biographies, and research on ascorbic acid (Vitamin C).
Ship logs that recorded the victuals ordered and stored on the Navy ships enlighten the reader about the bland and nutrition-deficient diet that sailors were forced to partake as part of their daily routine. Unfortunately, the bland and tasteless food rations, the damp quarters and unsanitary conditions, the four hours of sleep every night, plus the stress from the extreme physical labor all sailors experienced wore down the sailors’ immune systems and made them ripe victims for scurvy and numerous other diseases.
Although this was enjoyable read and Bown thoroughly researched his subject matter, there are a few weaknesses to the book. The first one is the 24-page chapter on Napoleon and Horatio Nelson which, at first read, appears out of place. It takes Brown thirteen pages of war strategy to explain how these two men and the Battle to Trafalgar were intertwined with scurvy:
“But with the defeat of scurvy, the warships of the Royal Navy never deserted their posts and the majority of Napoleon’s navy was kept bottled up in half a dozen separate ports throughout the war. The blockade disrupted France’s commerce and communication with her colonies, damaged the French economy, and weakened the country’s capacity to pay for the ongoing war” (198).

In other words, the expensive and preventive scurvy measures and rations were visibly paying off! Scurvy research had allowed the British Navy to build up their fleets due to the lack of deaths from scurvy. The increased manpower helped the British defeat the French whose forces were weakened from scurvy and other diseases and lack of support from Bonaparte. If these preventative measures had been in place decades earlier, the outcome of the American War for Independence might also have been in Britain’s favor! In the last two pages of Chapter 9, Brown points out the silent role the scurvy cure played in thrusting Britain onto to the world stage as a global empire:
“With a lower death toll of mariners on long voyages, the expense of manning ships and shipping goods was greatly reduced. Without scurvy tethering ships to port, global trade expanded throughout the nineteenth century, fuelling the Industrial Revolution” (208).

The second weakness I found was the glossing over of the Vitamin C research in the twentieth century, although this may be due to the fact that the book’s focus was on the Age of Sail. It still would have been nice to read how the scientific advancements of the microscope and germ theory aided scurvy research.
The cure for scurvy was also a social and humanitarian revolution. Instead of treating sailors as cheap and expendable, the preventive measures used in the 1800s changed the way the Admiralty viewed and treated the thousands of sailors in its care. The cure for scurvy had a ripple effect outside of Britain and increased trade and prosperity throughout the world.
Because of the non-academic nature of this book, I feel that multiple reading levels, reading styles, and research areas would benefit from reading this book. This book would appeal to readers and researchers of the Age of Sail, British naval history and medical history. As a college student and library employee, I would feel confident in recommending this for various reading needs and research purposes: AP History course, college history course, medical historians, naval historians, and amateur history buffs.

You can read more of my book reviews at www.thesouthernbookworm.blogspot.com

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took a while and there is a very good reason for that! All the information within the book was interesting and the premise was promising - the structure was a tad lacking. Again, if you’re interested in scurvy and really, British naval history, this would be the book for you. Just needed a better outline as I felt the book meandered a little too much.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, am adding scurvy to my studies of diseases and epidemics. Got interested in this one as we researched some science fair projects.

*************

I must return this to the library, alas.... so many books and so little time.

This is a great book. Read over the shoulder of my daughter who was working on a science fair project for vitamin C, I discovered another "who done it" disease book! (see my review of "The Great Influenza" at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... and my review of "An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793" at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... )

Scurvy is a disease caused by nutritional deficiencies, unlike influenza which is caused by a virus, or yellow fever which is a virus transmitted via mosquitoes. Our bodies need vitamin C to keep our connective tissues healthy. Lack of vitamin C causes connective tissues to literally disintegrate. Healed bones "break" apart again. Old wounds open again. Teeth loosen and fall out. The disease is painful and results in a horrible death if untreated. Yet it is estimated that over 2 million sailors died of scurvy during the Age of Sail.

Fascinating historical link? When the British were able to subdue scurvy among their sailors, they were able to defeat Napoleon when they blockaded the French navy successfully! The French navy had many ill and dying sailors while the British had healthier sailors with whom to fight.

What is interesting in this book is the "found the treatment" then "lost and forgot the treatment" back to the "found the treatment" to "lost it again" pendulum swing. The arrogance of the royal medical establishment probably doomed many thousands of sailors to slow death from scurvy because they insisted on pursuing vapors and humours instead of treatments that resulted in benefit. As early as the 17th century, lemon juice was shown to prevent scurvy, but this solution was overlooked again and again.

The surgeon mentioned in the book is James Lind. The Mariner is the great sea captain James Cook. The gentleman was physician Gilbert Blane. Each of these men over several decades independently worked to find the real cause and the real treatment for scurvy. That they succeeded is of course history... but how their searches twined together into resounding lasting proof is the stuff of the book.

I liked how the book was written, and would recommend it highly! A last note... since scurvy is a deficiency of vitamin C, it is possible for it to re-appear anywhere malnutrition is at hand. And interestingly enough? A high diet of fast food can result in scurvy!!

[K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating, though British-centric, look at the problem of scurvy for naval expeditions and how the discoveries of three men - Dr. James Lind, Captain James Cook, and Sir Gilbert Blane - combined to uncover a cure for scurvy.

The subtitle ("How a surgeon, a mariner, and a gentleman solved the greatest medical mystery of the Age of Sail") is perhaps a little misleading, as it sounds like the three men worked together to uncover the answers. Which, no. Lind was a naval surgeon who undertook controlled experiments to determine which rumoured antiscorbutics were actually effective. He wrote a treatise on the subject, but never came to any definitive conclusions. Cook led lengthy expeditions around the world, often at sea for months at a time. The Navy encouraged Cook to try out various claimed cures in the hopes of finding the (preferably cheap) answer. Given that he was busy leading an expedition around the world and then getting killed by Hawaiians for being a douchebag, Cook's notes were more than a little inconclusive.

Nevertheless, Lind's treatise combined with Cook's notes influenced Blane, who thanks to his social position and medical degree became (effectively) head physician to the entire navy. It was Blane who finally joined all the pieces together and prescribed lemon juice be issued daily to every sailor, preventing scurvy from appearing rather than treating cases as they appear. This revolutionised the British Navy, and allowed them to become a powerhouse during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The early stages of the book discuss specific cases of scurvy and the approaches that were used to treat it, with or without success. From there, we get effectively one chapter for each of the three men, followed by a chapter on the defeat of Napoleon at Trafalgar and how reliant that victory was on the use of preventative treatment.

It's a fascinating book, but it would have been perhaps moreso if it had had less of a focus on the Royal Navy and included more about how scurvy effected the French/Spanish/Dutch/Portuguese navies during the Age of Sail. A less Anglo-centric medical perspective also would have been interesting. Still, it's an eye-opening look at the impact of vitamin deficiencies upon the human body, and the implications it can have from a political and military perspective.

[Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ever fantasize that you had lived during the great age of discovery so that you could cross the great blue seas to distant undiscovered lands on a sailing ship? You have!

Yea... well... Ah - no... You really wouldn't want that. If you have any doubt - read this book!

Stephen Bown has stitched together a boat load of descriptions of scurvy and the conditions aboard ships from across the four centuries of the age of sail. I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the hard life and harrowing struggles against the elements that mariners experienced aboard the great wooden sailing vessels of that bygone era until I read this book.

Shiver me timbers!!!

It is a wonder indeed, that men ever put to sea at all given the risks they faced from all quarters.

Read this book to get a sense of the centuries long search to understand and find the cure for the greatest killer of men at sea - a far greater killer than that of storms, war, and all other diseases combined. The killer of men that arguably had a great influence on many historical events, outcomes of which could easily have been reversed had this deficiency disease been mastered as it easily could and should have centuries earlier.

I liked this book. It is well written and researched. However, there are some technical issues that bothered me throughout. Namely repetition and a convoluted time line. For me the description of conditions aboard ships was continuously repeated throughout the work without adding anything new. The second was that for the first several chapters Bown seemed to shift constantly back and forth along the time line making following the historical thread an unnecessary effort that should have been fixed before publication.

For these reasons, if the site allowed, I would rate this book 3.5 not 4 stars. So why did I rate it 4 vs 3 stars? It is truly worth a read that I do not wish to discourage.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and interesting for those of you interested in medical and or sailing history. Unfortunately not very much to do with pirates, but an interesting (and often gross) account of what happens to your body upon developing scurvy and why it was so slippery to figure out. Many sailors and physicians had written about lemons helping, but the information got vague over the years, and then often lost. Without any real understanding of nutrition, it is easy to see that it is more convenient to blame scurvy on just about anything else other than a bad diet. Also disturbing is that the first full push for curing the disease came when armys were losing ships, not sailors. Dead sailors don’t cost the British Navy any money. However scurvy may have saved Britain twice, once from the Spanish Armada and then again as Napoleon set his sights on the little island.

[Bill Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was a lot of information that I already knew in here, from having read nautical fiction and generally being aware of scurvy, but it filled in a lot of gaps.

One insight that I thought was particularly interesting was in learning about how and why the medical profession was so slow to adapt their beliefs in the face of clear scientific evidence. Since their fundamental world view was based on the Christian notion of the fall from grace, the feeling was that the older a piece of knowledge it was, the more true it must be, as anything discovered or deduced more recently would be the product of an increasingly impure humanity. So the older a text was on a given subject, the more weight it carried. The ancient Greeks had some really nutty ideas about medicine by modern standards, but these 17th century physicians preferred ancient knowledge over their own observations.

[Laura Isabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting book, although it was a little one-sided in my opinion. This story is told from the British perspective, but they can't have been the only ones looking for a cure. I also thought that the end was a little rushed and would have liked more information about the other non-sea-faring occurrences of scurvy. That being said, this author took what could have been an exceedingly boring topic and actually made me want to hear more about it after having listened to a whole book about it. That takes a certain amount of talent! Loved the interesting asides and the explanation of word origins. This was also a great read after having read Atlantic by Simon Winchester.

[Evan]

[Placeholder:]

Not sure I want to read an entire book where the punchline is going to be: "Go suck a lemon," but hey...

Hope that's not a spoiler. I already read about this in Robert Hughes' book about Australia, The Fatal Shore, where he covered this whole thing in a few paragraphs.

Maybe someday.

eg/kr '19

[Cat Nilan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very readable history of efforts to find cure for scurvy in the British navy. This is a quick read and feels like a padded article. I would have liked more detail and cultural analysis. (Read for Ada's Technical Books Non-fiction science reading group.)

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Completely enthralling read about how the cure for scurvy was ignored for years. Then, how Capt Cook's seven years at sea without losing any sailor to scurvy started to change the tide on medical acceptance of the lemon juice cure.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting non-fiction, included a ton of maritime history and how poor diet was a major factor in world history. This was an easy read and not too dry at all. Highly recommend.

[Laura Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Straightforward book about the tremendous toll scurvy took on sailors during the age of sail and how the efforts of three men: Lind, Cook, and Blane determined the cure.