Scurvy at The Saint Croix Settlement

Scurvy, otherwise known as the “Mal de la Terre” according to Samuel Champlain (Champlain 1907:52), is a disease caused by a Vitamin C deficiency that plagued sailors for hundreds of years.

Sailors lived through some of the harshest conditions possible while at sea. Not only were they living in incredibly cramped ships where regular sicknesses were passed around quickly and frequently, but their food and water supplies were easily depleted and spoiled. It was common to lose food due to weevils, maggots, rats, and mold. Any regular illness would be exacerbated by onboard conditions, and easily allowed scurvy to take ahold of a person.

Scurvy at the Saint Croix Settlement

When the men settled on Saint Croix Island, they planned on their seasons being similar to those in France, however, the winter of 1604 was one of the coldest recorded and they were unprepared. The first snow arrived on October 6th, with ice surrounding the island by December 3rd. The settlers were stuck on the island and had only Spanish wine, dirty water, and frozen cider to drink, eating only salted meat and some vegetables. The sick men experienced painful swelling and sores in various areas of their bodies, a harsh cough, and were unable to walk due to the severe pain. It is unsurprising that without an understanding of the illness, nor access to any cure, thirty-five out of the seventy-nine men died, with more than twenty others close to death (Champlain 1907:52-54).

Scurvy Across the Centuries

Sixteenth Century

On an expedition on the shores of the St Lawrence River in 1535, Jacques Cartier learned of a cure for their malady from a man named Dom Agaya. He showed the men that by boiling branches of a tree, likely a white cedar tree, in a great pot of water until the consistency was thick and had settled they could drink the tea every other day and leave dregs on their sores to be healed (Brown 2003:27-29). Unfortunately, this knowledge was not passed on, and for centuries many sailors would continue to succumb to scurvy.

Seventeenth Century

During this time, the most common cures for scurvy included: a daily dose of 2 ounces of vinegar, elixir of vitriol (sulfuric acid mixed with alcohol), and a potent patent medicine known as Ward’s Drop and Pill (strong purgative and diuretic)” (Brown 2003:58). In 1601, Sir James Lancaster carried bottles of lemon juice across four ships on his pioneering voyage to the Spice Islands (Brown 2003:71-72). Carrying lemon juice on voyages was not common practice at this time, and often was considered too expensive to restock often.

Interestingly, in 1617 John Woodall, surgeon general of the East India Company, prescribed lemon juice as a daily preventative on company ships in The Surgeon’s Mate. However, by the 1630s, the East India Company was prescribing tamarinds and oil of vitriol as the best remedies for scurvy. They were not interested and considered it too expensive to spend money on preventative medicines if an illness hadn’t made its appearance in the crew. Even worse was that if a ship did carry lemon juice aboard, it was almost guaranteed not to be effective, as the amount issued to each sick sailor would never be enough to combat a full case of scurvy (Brown 2003:75).

In later editions of The Surgeon’s Mate, John Woodall would go on to recommend various plants and berries such as scurvy grass, gooseberries, turnips, radishes, and nettles. While fresh, these items are good sources of ascorbic acid and could prevent scurvy. However when dried, as they would have needed to be for sailing, their effectiveness was either greatly reduced or eliminated entirely (Brown 2003:76).

Eighteenth Century

James Lind, a newly appointed surgeon, conducted an experiment in 1747 while aboard the HMS Salisbury. He took 12 men and separated them into 6 pairs. He moved their hammocks into one contained, damp area and fed them all the same standard diet. He gave the separate pairs the following trials: 1 quart of cider per day, 25 drops of elixir of vitriol 3 times per day, 2 spoonful’s of vinegar 3 times per day, 2 oranges and 1 lemon per day for 6 days (when the ship ran out), 3 times a day consume a nutmeg sized amount of “electuary” (medicinal paste) made of mustard seed, garlic, dried radish root, balsam of Peru, and gum myrrh. The pair with the worst symptoms had the misfortune of being given a half pint of sea water per day (Brown 2003:96-97). Unsurprisingly, the pair given the citrus fruit recovered quickly, and were then promoted to help nurse the rest of the sick men. The men who received the cider also responded well but were still too weak to return to work. In 1753, Lind’s work Treatise on the Scurvy was published (Brown 2003:97, 99).

Captain James Cook would go on to have success in preventing scurvy from ravaging his crew. From the time his ship set sail in 1768, Cook enforced “fresh air, cleanliness, and an antiscorbutic diet, making sure to stop for fresh vegetables and water when possible” (Brown 2003:137). He ensured that their provisions included “barrels of malt, sauerkraut, marmalade of carrots, mustard, portable soup, distilled water, and a small quantity of rob of lemon and oranges” (Brown 2003:137). Although he didn’t quite understand which change had the greatest impact, his enforced methods did greatly improve his sailor’s quality of life.

In 1780, Gilbert Blane, personal physician to Admiral Rodney, attempted to persuade the Royal Admiralty to issue daily rations of lemon juice to all sailors. Blane spent his weeks on ship studying different books, like Lind’s Treatise, and medical documents describing Cook’s journeys in order to gain a better understanding of sailor’s health at that time. He created A Short Account of the Most Effectual Means of Preserving the Health of Seamen, where he recommended ideal conditions of cleanliness and daily allowances of lemon juice to improve the health of sailors based on his readings. He then began collecting statistics from surgeons from each ship in the Royal Navy, which were then used in his recommendation to the Admiralty. While the Royal Admiralty was hesitant to use his recommendations, he was successful in convincing Admiral Rodney to implement these changes and soon the ships throughout the West Indies Fleet carried the juice. It was in 1795 that Blane was able to finally convince the Royal Admiralty to require a daily allowance of lemon juice for sailors (Brown 2003:170-181).

Nineteenth Century

Due to control over certain citrus juices, the East India Company switched from Mediterranean lemons to West Indian limes. It didn’t take long for lime juice to replace lemon juice as the mass-produced juice aboard ships. Issues arose with production as conditions were not always up to standard. Some batches were left too long in the heat or run through copper pipes, while others were sometimes substituted with lemon juice, therefore potency and effectiveness were inconsistent (Brown 2003:212-213). In 1867, around the time that merchant marine Britain legally required lime juice on ships, Scottish merchant Lauchlan Rose created the world’s first soft drink – Rose’s Lime Juice Cordial (Brown 2003:229).

Scurvy continued to weaken people throughout the Crimean War and American Civil War, as well as the Gold Rush. It even made it’s first appearance in infants, when it became popular to switch to bottle-feeding babies condensed milk that contained no Vitamin C (Brown 2003:213).

Twentieth Century

In 1907, Norwegian researchers Axel Holst and Theodor Frolich discovered during experiments on guinea pigs that a diet without fresh vegetables and fruit led to symptoms similar to scurvy and eventually death. It was clear that there was a specific component of diet that was affecting health. In 1912, Polish biochemist Casimir Funk developed the concept of vitamins to describe these essential nutritional components of food that humans need daily (Brown 2003:229).

Hungarian Scientist Albert Szent-Györgyi made incredible scientific advances in the 1920s and 30s with various experiments. He first identified hexuronic acid in 1928 isolated from plants and the adrenal cortex (Rosenfeld 1997:683; Science History Institute). Two years later in 1930, he conducted an experiment similar to the Norwegian scientists. He and J.L. Svirbely fed half of their guinea pigs a diet of boiled food (since boiling was known to destroy Vitamin C) and the other half received food enriched with hexuronic acid (Science History Institute). This experiment confirmed their beliefs that the acid and lemon juice were extraordinarily similar (Svirbely and Szent-Györgyi 1932:865-70). It was in 1932 that Szent-Györgyi isolated the active antiscorbutic compound (later renamed “ascorbic acid” due to its antiscorbutic properties) (Brown 2003:214). This led him to explore more natural sources of the acid, which he now knew to be Vitamin C; allegedly he experimented with the paprika his wife served him at dinner and happened to find an abundance of the acid (Science History Institute). In 1933, Swiss and English teams led by Tadeus Reichstein and Sir Walter Norman Haworth (a collaborator of Szent-Györgyi) were able to decipher the molecular structure of ascorbic acid. Both were awarded Nobel Prizes in 1937, and Reichstein devised a method for synthesizing ascorbic acid – Vitamin C – commercially (Brown 2003:215).

Works Cited

Brown, Stephen R.

Scurvy : How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail. Camberwell, Vic., Penguin, 2003.

Champlain, Samuel.

Voyages of Samuel de Champlain 1604-1618: With a Map and Two Plans. Edited by W.L. Grant, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1907.

Rosenfeld, Louis.

Vitamine—vitamin. The early years of discovery. Clinical Chemistry, Volume 43, Issue 4, 1 April 1997, Pages 680–685, https://doi.org/10.1093/clinchem/43.4.680

Svirbely, J. L., and A. Szent-Györgyi.

The chemical nature of vitamin C. The Biochemical journal vol. 26,3 (1932): 865-70. doi:10.1042/bj0260865

Science History Institute.

Albert Szent-Györgyi. [online] Available at: [Accessed 22 August 2021].