Scurvy, past and present / by Alfred F. Hess.

  • Alfred Fabian Hess
Date:
[1920]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Scurvy, past and present / by Alfred F. Hess. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/308 page 1
    SCURVY PAST AND PRESENT CHAPTER I HISTORY OF SCURVY 1 Outbreaks on Land.—Like many other diseases, the life history of scurvy shows several distinct phases. We hear of it first as a plague, infesting armies and besieged towns; then as a dread disease, decimating the sailors of the navy and of the mercantile marine, and, since the end of the last century, more often as a nutritional dis¬ turbance, endangering the health of infants. Very re¬ cently it has acquired an entirely new interest, as the representative of a class of disorders which has re¬ vealed the essential importance to man of unknown dietary factors. It is difficult, as may be imagined, to define with pre¬ cision the earliest description of scurvy, as the older references are so vague as to be open to individual inter¬ pretation. The reference of Hippocrates to a large num¬ ber of men in the army who suffered from pains in the legs and gangrene of the gums, which was accompanied by loss of teeth, seems sufficiently definite to be identified as this disease. The Greek, Roman and Arabian writers do not seem to have been acquainted with scurvy. This is as we should expect, for fruits and vegetables grew in 1 The best historical review of scurvy is to be found in Hirsch’s Hand¬ book of Geographic and Historical Pathology, from which account we have drawn many facts.
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