Nelson & His World

Anna you're absolutely correct about the refined white sugar that people buy in the baking lane at the supermarket: it's "100% natural simple carbohydrates" according to the label. No nutritional value. (It doesn't say that on the label.)

Again, I don't know a thing about sugar processing in the 1830s but I suspect the end product was maybe not as egregiously worthless nutritionally as the white sugar of today? But that is an assumption and I know what happens when we ASSUME... Anyway, I wondered if the product I mentioned, organic whole unrefined evaporated sugar cane juice sugar, might be somewhat closer to the sugar produced then. If so, there might have been a slight benefit to its consumption. I too find it strange advice though, and still wonder about possible corporate brainwashing. Eat more sugar, folks!

Sure, I'd be happy to post some information on ascorbate.

Oh, don't tempt me with that word "esoteric!" I might go off, for example, on why it was no accident that Nelson was born on Michaelmas. Or why that white bird appeared in his cabin, more than once by some accounts, and what it meant. Or why his career really took off after he lost an arm, his right arm...I'll stop.

Gretchen

I had fun Googling 'unrefined sugar'.

'Unrefined sugar - a guide to using healthy sweeteners......'

'Don't buy unrefined sugar because you think it's healthier....'

However, the unrefined sugar of the 1830s, as you rightly assume, is not the same as unrefined sugar today, which has been refined and then been treated to 'unrefine' it.

The 'old' sugar had some traces of 'vitamin and mineral content, including phosphorus, calcium, iron, and magnesium'. Chewing on raw sugar cane as the plantation workers did, would have provided fibre as well.

But stick to lemon juice as a cure for scurvy.

Now to your esoteric knowledge. Don't stop! That's what this forum is all about!

Let's start a new thread - I've got something I want to post - then you can add all the comments you like about Michaelmas, white birds and lost right arms.

Kester: there are conflicting opinions about ingesting sea water as well as sugar!


http://www.brighthub.com/engineering/ma ... 24753.aspx

In a post above I remarked that scurvy was a blight because the human system couldn't store supplies of vitamin C. That's what the doctors tell us! However, here's some interesting information Fiddler sent to me in a PM that she's happy for me to post here:

Re naval medicine and the scurvy discussion, this might interest you, it certainly did me. "Back when" I was reading about the Albemarle commission yet again, it was the scurvy outbreak that intrigued me rather than the Harmony or Mary Simpson. I had a lot of questions, made a lot of phone calls to universities - and it turns out that the human body can in fact store Vitamin C for limited periods of time. The health care community doesn't want us to know this, lest we get the idea we can skip our daily C; kids and even adults are still presenting to hospital emergency rooms with scurvy due to diets consisting almost exclusively of breakfast cereals, boxed mac-and-cheese, soft drinks, etc. The time it takes for the body to reach critical depletion and the onset of scury depends on a number of factors that vary with each individual. This is why an entire ship's complement would not fall ill to the same degree simultaneously.

Anna,

I was by no means of course advocating the drinking of seawater, even a few mouthfuls is enough(!), merely putting forward a theory advocated by some survival 'experts' and scientists, such as Dr Alain Bombard. For a start, ingesting all that salt can't be good and what the US military say is sound advice. I am sure the RN, and other marine organisations, would say the same.

Fiddler's post on scurvy is interesting and obviously a ship's company would only gradually fall ill from it for the reasons she mentions, which I'm sure the surgeons of the day were well aware of. (Good thing ship's compliments didn't have cereal for breakfast). However, this is a good illustration of our present day eating habits, particularly amongst the coming generations. I believe though, it is reasonably well known that the body can store vitamin C for short periods of time and even some health professionals will tell you that.

In the context of a biography of Dr Thomas Trotter, Physician of the Channel Fleet in the 1790s, I have recently gone into the conquest of scurvy in the Royal Navy and can throw some light on Devenish's surprize that citrus fruits were not acknowledged as the cure by the medical profession even as late as the 1830s.

The fact that lemon juice cured scurvy had been noted by mariners and naval surgeons as early as the 16th century. Indeed two leading surgeons, writing in the 1690s and 1720s respectively, had drawn attention to the fact. The problem was that these observations cut no ice with the physicians who ran the medical profession. One reason was that were accompanied by no theory as to why citrus juice worked (and the Enlightenment was about understanding as much as observation). Another reason was that the doctors were obsessed with an alternative theory that did fit the concepts of the time. This accepted that damp, physical labour, bad air and poor water etc made sailors liable to scurvy, but maintained that it was a disease of 'putrefaction' caused by an inability to digest a diet of bad meat and mouldy biscuit with the result that the body rotted from within. The principal cures backed by at the highest level in the medical profession throughout the 18th century were therefore design to ginger up the digestive system (principally by drinking barley water laced with vitriol and - after 1760 - fizzy drinks derived from fermenting malt and wort). These ideas still dominated medical establishment thinking at late as 1780 and, indeed, had been misguidedly supported by Captain Cook who had been ordered to report on their effectiveness.

The introduction of lemon juice regularly in the navy in 1796 was thus done in spite of the advice of the theorists in the medical establishment, and on the insistence of the admirals and practical naval surgeons whose experience in Gibraltar and the West Indies in the 1780s had convinced them that lemon juice worked and who cared nothing of the reason why.

By 1800, putrefaction, malt and wort had been discredited, but an alternative theory had still not arisen to explain the nature of scurvy. Lemon juice also had its dangers in that it was widely thought that although it provided a cure, it should not be taken as a preventative as it weaked the system. The medical profession however - and its textbooks -could still not endorse a cure without understanding why and how it worked and therefore fell back on an earlier idea (one in fact advocated by Lind) that scurvy had multiple causes and therefore should have multilple solutions. One of these multiple solutions was sugar - and this was based on the experience of the navy in the West Indies where molasses had been provided (as well as lemon juice) and had proved to be both conducive to health and widely popular with the men.

The idea that Lind 'discovered' lemon juice, saw it as the solution to scurvy and advocated its use is not true. This is a 20th century myth. True Lind mentioned the experiment with lemon juice on HMS Salisbury briefly in his voluminous and comprehensive 'Treatise', but it cut no ice with the medicial profession and it is clear from the documents that he paid little regard to it himself. Indeed, when asked by the admiralty in subsequent years to give advice on how to keep fleets healthy, he recommended the multiple-solution approach and ignored lemon juice, except to advocate that it be boiled down and used as a concentrated 'Rob'. Alas, Lind did not know that boiling destroys vitamin C, and went down the wrong track.

Brian Vale

Brian,

many thanks for that extremely informative post.

Have you got a publication date for Trotter's biography? Do keep us posted, won't you?

A little more on C and scurvy.

Although for convenience I refer to vitamin C and ascorbic acid (AA), I admit that no one in Nelson's day would have used or thought in these terms, which date from the first third of the 20th century.

Primates, including humans, cannot synthesize their own vitamin C as most other animals can, and need an external dietary source. We are generally told that the human body cannot appreciably store vitamin C because no one wants to imply that it's all right for people to forgo daily intake. However, limited amounts of ascorbic acid are stored in the pituitary gland, adrenal glands, eye lens, liver, pancreas, spleen, kidney, heart, brain and other organs and tissues.

"The estimated total amount of ascorbic acid in the human body tissues is on average 1500mg (maximum 5g) when completely saturated. Any excess of vitamin C is rapidly excreted. About 4% of this pool is lost daily...after intermission of vitamin C supply. The biological half-time of the pool is therefore approximately 8 - 40 days...The first symptoms of scurvy occur upon reaching a total body pool of 300 - 400mg." (Elmadfa and Koenig, Subcellular Biochemistry, Volume 25, 1996, pp. 140-141.)

Thus the time to critical depletion and the onset of scurvy would depend on existing body stores as well as other factors that would vary from person to person, factors that might impair AA absorption and/or accelerate loss. These would include current overall health status, age, weight, gender, tobacco use (including chaw), alcohol use, environment, physical activity and psychological stress levels, and prior AA depletion-repletion experiences. Such variables might account for the surprising half-life spread indicated above. On average it might be more like 16 - 20 days.

The human body needs a minimum of 6.5mg - 10mg of vitamin C daily to prevent scurvy, assuming the body pool is depleted. This will not create new reserves. Even at saturation regular intake is critical. Routine consumption of smaller amounts of ascorbic acid is more beneficial than intermittent, inconsistent intake of higher doses.

Recovery from scurvy upon treatment can be comparatively rapid. If the sufferer were to get about 250mg four times a day he might be in reasonably good shape after a week, again depending on a number of things. If the individual had been through more than one cycle of critical depletion and then repletion, particularly if somewhat close together, his recovery time would be longer after each episode.

***

Surgeon William Beatty wrote of Nelson: "And it is a fact, that early in life, when he first went to sea, he left off the use of salt, which he believed to be the sole cause of scurvy, and never took it afterwards with his food." (The Authentic Narrative of the Death of Lord Nelson.) Later in life, did Nelson still believe that salt caused scurvy? Was he blaming the food preservative itself rather than the fact of preservation?

Fiddler,
I expect that Nelson's attitude to scurvy would have changed during the 1780s and 1800s in the same way as opinion in the rest of the navy changed. In other words, while in the earlier years attention was focussed on finding a cure to a disease that was thought to have been brought on as a result of internal putrefaction caused by too much salt meat etc; in the later years, practical experience of using citrus juice at Gibraltar and in the W Indies had convinced naval officers that this was the answer and that the salt in meat was not in fact a major contributor. That was also the view reached by medics at the top of the navy. My impression is that with a cure now available, the navy lost interest in whether or not salt was a cause - which was just as well because there was no alternative way of preserving meat anyway.
The formative period for Nelson would have been his service in the Mediterranean Fleet in the late 1790s when St Vincent and Dr Andrew Baird demonstrated beyond all doubt that a daily dose of lemon juice was the answer to scurvy.
Nelson 'inherited' Baird who served as his Physician of the Fleet, but he seems to have had a more balanced view of the benefits and dangers of lemon juice that Baird and wrote to him in 1803 saying "lemon juice, taken properly is probably the finest anti scorbutic in the world, but abused (underlined) the destroyer of the strongest constitution." This was in fact the majority view in the medical profession.

Brian

Thanks Brian. I'm very much looking forward to your Trotter biography.

Gretchen

This would seem to be the place to slip in this little piece of information, regarding the closure of RNH Haslar, after 250 years:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/hampshire/content/ ... ture.shtml

It is to be replaced by the Ministry of Defence Hospital Unit, treating members of all three services, although Haslar had been doing this for some time. Since Haslar is I believe listed, I wonder what they will use the buildings for? In the report I enjoyed reading about Haslar's ghosts!

Many thanks for those details of the end of a long and honourable tradition.

I thought the link below, which gives an interesting picture of naval hospitals in Malta including one of Nelson's day, and approved by him, might be of interest.


http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/261 ... pital5.htm

It appears that Sir Joseph Banks, aboard HMS Endeavour with Captain Cook, took preventative measures to avoid scurvy. Here is an entry from his diary for April 11th 1769 (spelling unchanged):


QUOTE

I shall fill a little paper in describing the means which I have taken to prevent scurvy in particular.

The ship was supplyd by the Admiralty with Sower crout which I eat of constantly till our salted Cabbage was opened which I preferred as a pleasant substitute. Wort was served out almost constantly, of this I drank from a pint or more every evening but all this did not so intirely check the distemper .... I then flew to the lemon Juice which had been put up for me according to Dr Hulme's method describd in his book....'

END QUOTE

I wondered what 'wort' was and checked the trusty Shorter Oxford which gives several definitions, including 'plant or herb'; but also 'an infusion or decoction of malt formerly used in the treatment of ulcers and scurvy.'

Lemons, raw and peeled, have 48mg of Vitamin C per 100gm; lemon juice concentrate has 230mg/100gm. Sauerkraut has 10-15mg/100gm and malt 0.1mg/100gm. So Banks was wise to 'fly to the lemon juice.'

Tycho!

The medical explanation for scurvy current in 1769 was that it was a disease of 'putrefaction' - ie that it was a digestive complaint caused by eating indigestible salted meat and bad bread which then rotted within the body. Following an idea of Sir John Pringle, Surgeon General of the army, Dr David MacBride argued that this putrefaction prevented the body from producing 'fixed air' (ie carbon dioxide) which actually held the tissues of the body together and that this resulted in scurvy. He thought that the condition could be cured by drinking an extract of malt called wort which would ginger up the system, unblock the putrefaction and release the 'fixed air'.

This totally inaccurate explanation and its ineffective cure, was supported at the highest level, and dominated thinking in the medical establishment for thirty years from 1760. All ships were supplied with malt/wort at considerable expense. When Cook sailed for the Pacific, he was ordered to test the latest cures for scurvy - notably malt/wort, sour crout and a thing called 'rob' (boiled down concentrated citrus juice invented by by James Lind). None of them worked - not even the 'rob' (boiling citrus juice destroys the vitamin C) Cook was not ordered to test pure lemon juice (even though sailors had known for years that it seemed to provide a disease) because it did not fit in with the medical establishment theory of disease. The result was that Cook mistakenly backed malt and wort (and received a medal from the Royal Society whose President was then Pringle, the Godfather of the theory!)

Scurvy was only cured in the Navy when, in 1793, the admirals ignored the medical establishment and demanded lemon juice for their ships.

It is a pity that Sir J Bank's observations on the cure provided by lemon juice were confined to his private journal. If he had challenged medical opinion and made his experience public he might have advanced the date of the elimination of scurvy in the Navy by decades. But he didn't.

Brian

I have just acquired a most interesting little book, 'The Medical Pocket Book' by John Elliot MD published in 1794. It is a small (3"x5") leather bound booklet with a leather strap and loop, intended to be a quick reference book that a doctor might carry, as the title indicates, in his pocket.

I thought his comments on the treatment of scurvy might be of interest. Even at this late date, Elliot is ascribing the cause to 'putridity from the use of animal food'.

SCURVY: Symptoms. Heaviness, lassitude and low spirits; offensive breath; tender gums; sallow bloated countenance; hemorrages [sic] from the nose of mouth; difficult breathing; swelling of the legs; yellow, purple or livid spots on the skin; tumours in the limbs; contraction of the tendons of the ham. Other symptoms occur but they differ in different subjects, as do likewise those above mentioned; and the disease is generally sufficiently known. It is however, distinguished into Sea and Land Scurvy.

Treatment: in the Sea Scurvy, the juices are disposed to putridity from the use of animal food, and moist air; antiseptics therefore will be proper, as vegetable acids, fruit, cyder &c. Infusion of malt in defect of these, or liquors made of molasses or sugar. Bark and vitriolic acid are good. Liquid impregnated with fixed air for common drink, and wholesome air. Chalybeates have been found serviceable, especially when joined with the bitters or bark. Burying the patient up to the chin in fresh dug earth has been found extremely serviceable. [!!!]

The Land Scurvy (improperly so called) is rather a cutaneous disease; scurfy or scabby eruptions appear, either partially, or more universally; often with itching and heat.

Treatment: The antimonial alteratives with gentle mercurials are frequently efficacious; lime water, or the compound juice of scurvy-grass, may be used with them. Crystals of tartar and flowers of sulphur are good. The parts may be anointed with saturnine liniments with a little white kalk or quicksilver if necessary.

Scurvy-grass, Garden, is listed as a stimulant, antiscorbutic. Chalybeates means 'impregnated or flavoured with iron'.

Dr Elliot was a strange character. He became obsessed with his publisher's daughter and was committed to Newgate Prison charged with assault. There, he starved himself to death before he could be tried.