Back To The 1700s: Scurvy

“I couldn’t believe you could be obese and malnourished,” a woman is quoted as saying at the beginning of this article. Last November, in Zimbabwe and Australia doctors were faced with an outbreak of scurvy. You know, the disease you read about when you were little in books about 18th century adventures at sea.

It turns out that in the last few years there has been an increasing number of patients diagnosed with scurvy. Before pointing to the potential reasons for scurvy’s reemergence, the author walks us through a short history of what vitamin C is and why it’s vital for our survival. The lack of fresh fruit and vegetables — that is, of vitamin C — is what caused the 18th century sailors to become ill with scurvy. They lost their teeth, their hair, their skin bruised easily, their tendons stiffened, and their “leaden pallor and sunken eyes made them look like the walking dead”.

Physicians fumbled for quite a while, until 1933, when they discovered the cause of and remedy for scurvy. Yet, if the disease is easily treated with fresh fruit and vegetables or a single vitamin tablet a day, the question remains: Why is it still happening today and why are there people like the woman quoted above, who at first impression you wouldn’t think have scurvy? The answer, the author suggests, lies in “ignorance about food among individuals and misguided state policies concerning diets of the young and the elderly”.