Lectures on the disorders resulting from defective nutriment / [George Budd].
- George Budd
- Date:
- [1842]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures on the disorders resulting from defective nutriment / [George Budd]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![the accounts of the siege of Alexandria in the late war, published by Baron Larrey, and the reports of the Inspectors of Prisons, show that the disease may be equally de¬ structive on shore, and that it presents there precisely the same characters as at sea. The ravages occasioned by scurvy at sea during the voyages of the early navigators almost surpass belief; and must increase our admiration of the perseverance and courage that, unsubdued by such difficulties, still ])ushed on, with instruments we should now consider imperfect, over the unexplored expanse of ocean. Vasco de Gama, in the voyage in 1497, which had such a remarkable influence on the destinies of this country, and of Europe, by the discovery of a passage to the East Indies round the Cape of Good Hope, lost a hundred of his men, out of a hundred and sixty, from this distemper. In the expedition for the establishment of the East India Company, consisting of four ships under Commodore Lancaster, which left this counti'y on the 2d of Api’il, 1600, scurvy prevailed to such a degree in three of the ships, tliat one-fourth of the crews died of it before reaching the Cape, and the rest were so weakened that hands were wanting to work the ships, and the merchants on board were obliged to do the duties of com¬ mon sailors. A remarkable circumstance was here noticed, which, if laid hold of and turned to profit, would have prevented many subsequent disasters. It was, that while three of the ships were so weakened by scurvy that their crews could not take in their sails or hoist out their boats, the Commodore’s own ship was in perfect health. This was attributed at the time to his having- given three table-spoonfuls of lemon-juice every morning to each of his men. The discovery of the virtues of lemon-juice, as a preventive of scurvy at sea, seemed to have been made ; but it was soon forgotten, or, at least, it was only remembered when chance again offered some striking proof of the singular efficacy of oranges or lemons. No practical advantage followed ; the disease continued, as before, to devastate our fleets, destroying more men, even in time of war, than fell in battle, until 1795, when attention having been again called to the protective influence of lemon-juice, and some experi¬ ments having been made which left no doubt of its reality, an Admiralty order was given that every ship in His Majesty’s navy should have a regular supply of it. The effect of this order was remarkable. Notwithstanding the improvements that had been made some years previously in the victualling and general management of our ships, and which had done much to inqjrove the health of sailors, the mortality fell sud¬ denly, and to a degree that can scarcely be credited by one who has not read the heart¬ rending accounts of the sufferings occa¬ sioned by scurvy in the voyages of Lord Anson, and our earlier navigators. Some estimate may, however, be formed of the effects of this and of the other salutary mea¬ sures, by a fact mentioned by Sir J. Barrow, that between the years 1779 and 1813 the ordinary sickness and mortality in the British navy were reduced almost to one-fourth of their former proportion. At present, scurvy is almost unknown in the British navy ; and our ships of war, while on the ocean, often have a less mor¬ tality than the most healthful districts of the globe. This is what might have been expected from the pure air at sea, and the freedom from noxious malaria and conta¬ gious diseases that occasion so large a share of the mortality on shore, and from the ab¬ sence of the cares and anxieties that exercises their corroding power on those whom neces¬ sity compels to earn a precarious subsistence in the crowded workshops of our manufac¬ turing towns. Now that the experience of nearly half a century has established the infallible effi¬ cacy of lemon-juice in preventing scurvy even in the longest voyages, and in curing it in whatever circumstances it occurs, and when lemon-juice is so cheap that a sailor may be furnished during a voyage from this country to Calcutta with the liberal allow¬ ance of the navy for four or five shillings, it may well excite surprise that up to the pre¬ sent time no regulation has been made for compelling our merchant-ships to take a supply oi it. Our merchant-seamen, of whose great importance every statesman is aware, who enrich the country in peace and defend it in war, are still left to the avarice of ship-owners, who not unfrequently sacrifice the health of the crews, and often, by a just retribution, their own interest,for a petty sav¬ ing of what, at sea, must be considered one of the necessaries of life. Every year a number of miserable beings are brought into port in our merchant-ships, with pallid sallow coun¬ tenances, with their bodies mottled with petechise and bruise-marks — their gums bleeding and spongy—their teeth dropping- out—as if to show us the fidelity of the de¬ scriptions which the old navigators have left of their sufferings, to bring the past in contact with the present, and to teach us a lesson of humility by showing, with all our boasted improvements, how slow we still are, when not urged on by the impulse of self-interest, in giving effect to discoveries most important to the well-being of our fellow men. Now and then still worse cases occur. A vessel in a voyage from Sidney, or from the Mauritius, loses half her crew](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30559340_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
