Scurvy Was Far Deadlier Than Most People Realize
It killed a shocking number of people
Today, scurvy is often mentioned alongside pirates and oranges. Modern medicine now knows that scurvy is the result of dangerously low levels of vitamin C. The most common victims of scurvy were the crews of sailing ships that would be at sea for weeks or months at a time.
Scurvy is seen very infrequently in modern patients. Even at the tail end of the 19th century, most seafaring folk believed that the British Navy had eliminated scurvy by prescribing daily rations of lemon and lime juice. It is a disease firmly regulated to the past.
Even now, it is hardly mentioned by average people without a lilt of the voice and the undeniable urge to say arggh afterwards. But scurvy was no joke. Scurvy was, and is, a serious disease with horrifying consequences. And it killed people. A lot of people.
How scurvy kills
Vitamin C, or L-ascorbic acid, is a critical component of life. It is the building block that forms collagen which is the most common protein in the human body. Collagen makes up nearly every connective tissue in a…
