Summary: A Treatise Of The Scurvy

“A Treatise of the Scurvy, in Three Parts: Containing an Inquiry Into the Nature, Causes, and Cure, of that Disease”, was published back in 1753 by James Lind (Milne I, 2012). Scurvy is a disease which results from a lack of vitamin C (Scurvy, 2016). James Lind was the first person to study the effect of citric fruits on curing scurvy by using a systematic experiment in 1747(Lind, 2016). His started his experiment when the ship was afflicted with scurvy. Lind thought that scurvy was due to decomposition of proteins in the body which could be aided by acids, and thus decided to include a dietary supplement of an acidic quality into his experiment. The acid end of one molecule can link up to the basic end of another. The chains hence produced could form the basis of a protein structure. This experiment involved 12 sailors who were infected with scurvy (Lind, 2016).

Lind was born to an Edinburgh merchant, whose wife had medical connections (Milne I, 2012). In 1731 he began his medical studies as an apprentice of George Langlands which was a fellow of the Incorporation of Surgeons. By 1747 he had become surgeon of HMS
Salisbury in the Channel Fleet and started conducting his experiment on scurvy as the ship was patrolling the Bay of Biscay (Lind, 2016).
He divided twelve infected sailors into six groups of two. They were accommodated in the same quarters and had an identical basic diet. “group one was given a quart of cider daily, group two twenty-five drops of elixir of vitriol (sulfuric acid), group three six spoonfuls of vinegar, group four half a pint of seawater, group five received two oranges and one lemon, and the last group a spicy paste plus a drink of barley water. The treatment of group five stopped after six days when they ran out of fruit, but by that time one sailor was fit for duty while the other had almost recovered.” The other groups did not show effect of its treatment (Lind,