James Lind and scurvy / [Ralph Stockman].

  • Stockman, Ralph, 1861-1946.
Date:
[1926]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: James Lind and scurvy / [Ralph Stockman]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    optimistic enthusiasm after the work had been accomplished and found to be good,” and that “ thousands of cases continued to occur well into the next century.” It is quite understand¬ able that in those days of sailing ships and slow communication, and with the fleet widely scattered on distant stations, it took some few years to accomplish a complete reformation, but Trotter,9 in 1803, bears witness that “a case of scurvy requiring to be sent to Hospital has not come under my observation since 1795 ” ; and Blane that, in 1800, after a cruise of four months the Channel Fleet had no cases of scurvy on board, whereas, in 1780, after a ten weeks’ cruise, it was overrun with the disease. The blame for the long delay in adopting Lind’s advice has been very generally laid on official inertia at the Admiralty, but it should probably, with more justice, be borne by its medical advisers. It is not to be supposed that the Lords of the Admiralty and Government officials could determine the relative merits of one form of medical treatment in preference to another. They, no less than the executive officers, were very fully and even pathetically alive to the often disastrous inefficiency caused in ships of war by scurvy, and seem to have been extremely liberal and anxious in providing extract of malt and other inferior or reputed remedies, and when the real remedy was somewhat belatedly put before them, there seems to have been no want of alacrity in supplying it. Blane10 himself, in 1781 and 1782, when he was in medical charge of the West Indies Fleet, had no better remedies to suggest or to offer for two serious outbreaks of scurvy than molasses, extract of malt, wine, and sour krout, until the fleet put into land and procured a supply of limes. At that time Blane had still to learn how to prevent and treat scurvy successfully at sea, and he only learned it later from Lind’s book. Since his time there have been many outbreaks of scurvy during famines, among troops and civil populations under war conditions, in the Arctic, and in institutions, but the disease, as a sea disease, has now practically disappeared, although it required many years and two acts of parliament (1844 and 1867) to eradicate it from our mercantile marine. With regard to the delay in instituting a lemon-juice ration, the truth seems to be that medical schools and writers were obsessed with their theories, and when officially consulted, as they often were, gave very poor advice, and that naval medical officers, who alone knew the disease practically, had failed to
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