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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    grasp the full bearing of Lind’s teaching although it had been before them for so many years. This is the more surprising, as another naval surgeon, Frederick Thomson, had published, in 1790, a most practical and suggestive account11 of how scurvy could be prevented at sea, with many recommendations (largely taken from Lind) for improving the sailors’ dietary, and, in 1785, Leonard Gillespie12 had strongly advocated the substitution of preserved lemon and lime juice for malt, sour krout, and the other naval antiscorbutic stores. He also praises raw potatoes, the value of which he had learned from a sailor. And yet, as late as 1795, we find David Paterson,13 also a naval surgeon, advising a mixture of nitre and vinegar as “ a new, an easy and effectual means of curing the disease.” Lind died forty-one years after his book was published and without seeing his recommendations carried into any practical effect or any diminution in the terrible ravages of scurvy. It is difficult at this distance of time to say why he did not show more energy in such an important matter. He may have tried and been rebuffed; there are no records and speculation is futile, but in a curious sentence Lind himself says, “ The I Province has been mine to deliver Precepts; the Power is in [ others to execute.”14 It may explain a good deal, or it may have been a mere mental attitude on his part. It is well known that the great Captain Cook laid more stress on general hygiene than on antiscorbutics,15 his opinion carried great weight, and he expressed a very guarded judgment on the value of the rob of oranges and lemons proposed by Lind for use at sea. To appreciate Lind’s services to medicine at their proper value it is necessary to know something about the history of scurvy as an endemic European disease, and more especially the attitude towards it of the leading medical authors and practitioners during the two preceding centuries. The story is one which cannot be described as creditable to the profession of medicine. From unknown times scurvy had been endemic among the continental peoples bordering on the Baltic and North Sea as a result of hard conditions of life and their enforced dietary during the long northern winters. All classes had to live largely on salted fish and meat, potatoes were as yet unknown, and fresh vegetables and fruit unobtainable. There was little sunlight, much fog, cold, and rain, and houses were damp, dark, and confined—exactly the same conditions which 34o
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