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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    mouldy biscuit and flour are misfortunes common at sea,” says Lind, and yet often no scurvy broke out in the crew, even in three years. All these anomalies raise the doubt as to whether a mere deficiency is by itself sufficient to explain fully the etiology of the disease. No new matter of any great clinical importance appeared on scurvy until Cheadle (1879) and Barlow (1883) published their well-known descriptions of the disease in infants, which served to emphasise the purely dietetic view of its etiology. Such cases arise from well-intentioned but not very well- informed efforts on the part of doctors, chemical manufacturers and milk companies to provide artificial foods for infants, and it is to be hoped are already incidents of the past. On the experimental side Holst and Froehlich, in 1907, made the very interesting discovery that scurvy could be readily produced in guinea-pigs by a diet of oats and water, and, in 1912, the very important addition that cereal grains and pulses when allowed to germinate acquire antiscorbutic properties. The deduction made from this is that the anti¬ scorbutic element in fresh plants and meat is an outcome of their active cell metabolism. Since then other experimenters have succeeded in producing typical scurvy in monkeys, but so far not in dogs, rabbits, rats and certain other animals. It is evident from these researches that different species of animals vary greatly in their susceptibility to the disease, just as they do to microbic diseases, and that some species seem to enjoy an immunity. All records show that men also vary much in their individual susceptibility. In the Lister Institute and other laboratories a large amount of quantitative work has been done on antiscorbutics in guinea-pig scurvy, but how far this is directly applicable to man will probably now never be put to the test owing to the practical disappearance of scurvy as a human disease under ordinary conditions of life. Besides his work on scurvy Lind was the author of two books on naval and tropical hygiene of very great importance for their time. They are An Essay on the most Effectual Means of preserving the Health of Seamen in the Royal Navy which was written before he left Edinburgh, and went through three editions (1757, 1762 and 1779), and an Essay on Diseases incidental to Europeans in Hot Climates (1768). In these he gives full directions for keeping ships clean and healthy and for disinfecting them. For disinfection and getting rid of
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