Columbus’ Voyage Ruined by Scurvy
Christopher Columbus was born in Italy in 1451. He discovered America. He travelled from court to court in search of someone to support his trip and his theories. He was ridiculed when he announced that he believed the world was round. Eventually King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain agreed to finance and support his expedition.
Christopher Columbus gets finance and support from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.
His first trip to the new world ended with many of his crew dying of scurvy. Sir Richard Hawkins recommended the following treatment for scurvy in 1593, after a voyage to the South Pacific, sour oranges and lemons. Captain James Lancaster unintentionally performed a study of lemon juice as a preventive for scurvy, in 1601. His fleet of four ships departed on April 21, 1601 and scurvy began to appear in three of the ships within 4 months after sailing. When their journey ended, the men of Lancaster;s ship had to assist the rest of the fleet into the harbor, as the sailors on the three ships were sick with scurvy.
Lancaster’s men remained free of scurvy because he brought bottles of lemon juice on the journey which he distributed to his crew to be taken every morning. Captain Lancaster gave the Admiralty a report on the protection that lemon juice gave his sailors.
This was 111 years before Lind’s famous experiment on the Salisbury in 1747 and 159 years before lemon juice was made a requisite in the British Navy. It is estimated that 5000 lives a year were lost from scurvy during this period.
In the 200 years from 1600-1800 nearly 1,000,000 men died of an easily preventable disease.
Symptoms of Scurvy
The symptoms of scurvy usually began three months after a person stops getting enough vitamin C in their diet. The first symptoms of scurvy included.
Fatigue
Pain in your limbs especially your legs.
The appearance of small red/blue spots on the skin
The spots then grow and merge to create large dark patches on your skin.
Swollen gums-teeth may fall out
Severe joint pain caused by bleeding inside the joints
Shortness of breath
Easily bruised skin
Scurvy can then cause jaundice
Oedema (swelling caused by a buildup of fluid)
The effects of scurvy begin in the mouth with a purplish swelling of the gums. The gums become spongy and the patient can’t eat. It is accompanied by salivation and acute pain. Hemorrhaging and salivation occur and the breath smells. The patient becomes thin and anemic and the skin is infected and covered with black blotches. The patient normally dies due to heart failure.
As you can see, scurvy was a terrible sickness and nobody wanted to believe that lemons could be a cure. It took 179 years before it was accepted as a cure. Although there have been many testimonials of people being cured by alternative medicine, it gets ridiculed. Dr Simoncini discovered that cancer was a fungus and he has cured hundreds of patients with bicarbonate of soda. Dr Gonzalez cures cancer with a nutritional approach. Dr Gonzalez died in 2015 of a heart attack. Many alternative methods like aloe vera, cinnamon, resveratrol in grapes or berries are all anti-fungal and anti-bacterial. Dr Simoncini and Dr Gonzalez treatment do not destroy the immune system.
In 1740 George Anson set off on a circumnavigation with six ships and 1,955 men. By the end of his voyage 1,051 sailors had died, mostly of scurvy.
In 1747 James Lind, a Scottish physician performed the following experiment aboard the Salisbury. He took several groups of sailors dying of scurvy. He prescribed several diets, one of which consisted of two oranges and one lemon every day. Within a week or so, those sailors had recovered so much that they were caring for the others, all of which died. The results were presented to the Admiralty. They obviously did not believe that a mere lemon taken daily could prevent or cure a deadly disease like scurvy.
In the 1768-69 Captain Cook circumnavigated the world in three years and only lost one man from disease. TB. His diet relied on malt and sauerkraut but treated cases of scurvy with orange and lemon juice that the surgeon kept.
In 1795 the Admiralty finally mandated lemon juice for all sailors.
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