Viatouch Teacher Articles
History

Dr. James Lind and the Discovery of Vitamin C
by Pat Sherman

The H.M.S. Salisbury had only been at sea for a few months in the spring of 1747and already Dr. James Lind faced an emergency. Dozens of sailors lay below deck too weak to walk. First, their gums had become raw and swollen, causing their teeth to rot out. Next, deep bruises spread over their skin. Old wounds began to bleed again. Broken bones, which had once healed, snapped in two. It was as if their bodies were simply falling apart as they sank into a slow, agonizing death. For centuries this mysterious disease, scurvy, had tormented sailors. No one knew the cause and no one could find a cure.

Lind, a Scottish physician serving on a British warship, decided to conduct an experiment. Choosing twelve of the sickest sailors, he divided them into six pairs. Each pair received a different treatment. The first drank a quart of cider every day. The second gargled with vinegar. The third took a dose of sulfuric acid. The fourth drank a half pint of sea water. The fifth ate an orange or lemon. And the sixth consumed a lump of garlic paste. Lind examined these twelve patients daily, taking detailed notes on their condition. By comparing the results, he hoped to establish a remedy.

He suspected scurvy might be related to diet. Over two hundred years earlier, several Portuguese sailors, crippled by scurvy, had begged to be put ashore as their ship passed through the West Indies so they could at least die on dry land. A year later, when their ship stopped at the same island, the men on board were shocked to find their old friends alive and healthy. They had survived by eating the fruits that grew on the island, which they named Curacao, the Portuguese word for cure. In 1535, the French explorer Jacques Cartier claimed he had been cured of scurvy by drinking a tea made from fresh pine needles given to him by the Iroquois, who lived near the Great Lakes in Canada.

These accounts amazed and puzzled Lind. What could tropical fruits and pine needles have in common? How could the same disease have such different cures? Was it the taste? Was the cure based in the sourness of certain fruits or the bitterness of the pine needles? If so, wouldn't sour vinegar or bitter black tea work just as well? And if fresh food worked, why not dried? Or maybe scurvy wasn't related to food at all, some argued. Perhaps it was caused by foul air or stormy weather. Because exhaustion was one of the first symptoms of scurvy, a few ship captains insisted the disease was actually caused by laziness, even though most seamen labored aboard their ships nearly twenty-four hours a day. If the sailors wished to avoid scurvy, the captains said they should work harder! The debates over the cause of scurvy only made the search for a cure more confusing. Lind's experiment was the first step towards a solution.

We know now that scurvy is caused by a lack of vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid. Ascorbic acid enables our bodies to produce collagen, which builds the connective tissue that holds our bones, organs, and muscles together. Without vitamin C we really do fall apart. Fortunately, ascorbic acid can be found in many fruits and vegetables. Few of us today have to worry about scurvy.

In the eighteenth century though, the average seaman's diet consisted of flour, salted meat, dried beans, and a bit of cheese. As supplies dwindled, they were reduced to eating nothing but "hard tack," a very coarse biscuit, and "sea horse stew," beef boiled in sea water. On a long voyage sailors could go for months without tasting a single fresh fruit or vegetable. It's not hard to guess how Lind's twelve patients fared. Five of the six pairs showed no improvement. The sixth recovered so rapidly that within a week they were helping Lind care for the other men. These were the lucky two who had been eating oranges and lemons. At last, Lind had found the cure for scurvy!

Well, not quite. Captains grumbled that whole fruits were expensive and spoiled rapidly. In an effort to make his cure cheaper and easier to store, Lind boiled lemon juice down into thick, concentrated syrup. Unfortunately, this syrup didn't work as well as fresh lemons. Lind had no way of knowing that heat destroys ascorbic acid. He still believed fruit could cure scurvy, but he just couldn't prove why. For another half century, doctors continued to struggle with the disease.

Finally, in 1795, the British Navy instituted a rule requiring all ships to carry rations of fresh lime juice for each sailor. Britain's leaders didn't know how lime juice prevented scurvy, but they had noticed that sailors who ate better food remained healthier; and, healthy sailors equaled a stronger navy.

It wasn't until 1912 however, that Casimir Funk, a Polish chemist, analyzed substances in foods that could prevent disease. He called these substances "vitamins" after the Latin word vita for life, and amines, for chemical compounds. Once vitamins had been identified, scientists began to search for and find them in many foods.

Today Lind's experiment is known as the world's first clinical trial. Researchers use this method to test thousands of new medical treatments every year. And James Lind will always be remembered as both the inventor of the clinical trial and the doctor whose work established the benefits of good nutrition, which led to the discovery of that great vitamin, C!

How Much Vitamin C Do You Need?

According to a report issued by the U.S. National Institute of Medicine in 2000, children between the ages 4 and 10 should consume at least 45 milligrams (mg) of vitamin C every day. Children over 10 years old and adults should consume at least 65 mg per day.
http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/document/html/AppendixB.htm#appB9

Bibliography
Bown, Stephen R. Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the
Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2005.

Carpenter, Kenneth J. The History of Scurvy and Vitamin C. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Nelson, Jennifer K. et al. Mayo Clinic Diet Manual: a Handbook of Nutrition
Practices. St. Louis: Mosby Publication, 1994.

Roddis, Louis H. James Lind, Founder of Nautical Medicine. New York: Henry Schuman, 1950.

Internet Resources
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/lind_james.shtml
http://www.jameslindlibrary.org/index.html
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002399.htm

Pat Sherman is a children's author in Cambridge, MA, whose first book, "The Sun's Daughter", was published by Clarion in 2005. She also writes non-fiction and reviews books for ChildrensLit.com.