What is scurvy? Scurvy is a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C. It can be fatal is not treated, although that is rare.
The majority of us easily get enough vitamin C these days and we don’t even really need to think about it. We get it from fresh fruit and vegetables, or from fruit juices. Even people that live on an entirely ultra processed food diet still get vitamins because the companies that produce the food fortify it with vitamins. This might not make the food healthier, but it allows the companies tha produce the food to make claims about the vitamin content of the product. We also don’t spare much thought to vitamins. We know that we need them, but we don’t really know why. Our bodies have different uses for all of the vitamins, but vitamin C is used to make blood vessels, cartilage, muscle, and collagen in bones. It is also used to free our bodies of free radicals that are made when we break down food and through a lot of other processes. Without vitamin C, our skin, bones, and connective tissue don’t heal and grow as well as they are supposed to. It also helps us to absorb iron. Some animals produce their own vitamin C in their livers, such as dogs and cats, but we cannot. Interestingly, some carnivores can produce their own vitamin C, because they don’t eat any vegetables, but some carnivores cannot, and they get the vitamin C by eating the organs, especially the liver, of animals that can produce vitamin C.
If you don’t have any vitamin C for a few days, you will be fine. You’d even be fine after a few weeks. The symptoms start to set in after a few months, once your body has worked through its stores of vitamin C and the damage has reached a point where your body can feel it. In the beginning, you will be tired, weak, irritable, and your joints will hurt. There are many things that can cause symptoms like this, so you might not automatically think scurvy. After a few months, you will start to get anemic, your gums will swell and bleed, your teeth will become loose and maybe fall out, you may bleed under the skin, which causes a rash, you will get bruised easily, your legs will swell, your skin will become scaly, your wounds won’t heal, your hair will become brittle, your bones will break more easily, and you will lose your appetite. If you don’t treat it, scurvy will be fatal in the end. People with scurvy die from internal hemorrhaging, breathing problems, or infections. However, even seriously advanced scurvy can be fixed with vitamin C. If you give someone with severe vitamin C a cup of orange juice every day, they will be fine within two weeks.
Scurvy is very rare in developed countries these days, but it is still common in developing countries. Countries with a large amount of poverty will often have high incidences of scurvy because it is difficult for people to find fruit and vegetables. It can also be found in poor countries that have harsh winters because in the summer, people can eat the fruit ad vegetables they grow, but in the winter, they don’t have access to fruit and vegetables because they can’t afford freezers. This used to be the case in most countries before the invention of the freezer and the onset of globalization. Now, if you have money, you can get fruit and vegetables at any time of the year.
Scurvy is one of the most famous diseases that caused havoc on board ships as well. Enormous numbers of sailors died from scurvy on long voyages and it was common for a ship to only come back with about 20% of its original crew. Nobody understood why, but it was generally accepted that sailors would just die. The most common theory was that the roughness of the sea and the hardship of the voyage caused digestion problems that led to all of the symptoms of scurvy. Experiments in the 17th century showed that drinking fruit juice held off scurvy, but it was not accepted. As more and more people started to sail and journeys became longer, it became more important to find a cure for scurvy. In the late 18th century, British ships started carrying lemon juice and sugar to drink with it. Any ship that had a supply of lemon juice was invariably scurvy free and the crew were fitter and healthier. They could sail further and fit better. This is one of the reasons why the British Navy was able to push as far as it did. By 1897, all ships of the British Navy were required to provide lime or lemon juice to all sailors daily, which is where the slang word for British people, limey, comes from. The true cause of scurvy was only discovered in 1932. It is very easy to cure, but the fact that it still happens in so many developing countries is a sad state of affairs. And this is what I learned today.
Sources
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24318-scurvy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_names_for_the_British
https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-vitamin-c/art-20363932
https://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/what-to-know-scurvy
Photo by Jana Ohajdova: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-fruits-10343579/