Scurvy is zero fun. We’re not sure how much you know about this disease but it’s not a walk in the park. Okay, it’s fair to say that not many diseases are a gentle stroll through a pretty field of flower-filled gardens, but scurvy really is an incredible bastard. The only thing going for it is that you’re generally dead pretty quick.
You start off feeling a little tired, sore and short of breath. Your gums start to hurt and your legs swell. Then, your darkening, swelling legs develop purple, black, red or blue spots, your muscles start wasting away and you start hallucinating. Then your teeth fall out, your gums rot, old wounds open up and you become so weak and sick that you die. Put simply, it is horrible and gross.
And scurvy is not a recent phenomenon.
It has plagued humans since ancient times. It hammered early agricultural societies, and we can even see evidence of it in ancient writings.
But while it has always been around, it really took off in the age of the explorers.
Take, for example, Vasco de Gama’s 1497 journey around the Cape of Good Hope. One hundred of his one hundred and sixty men died. In fact, all shipowners and governments in the 15th-18th centuries assumed that 50% of the crew on a long voyage would die of scurvy. Imagine starting your voyage knowing that you had a 50/50 shot at actually living to see the end of it.
It doesn’t sound like a great time. We’re surprised anyone wanted to voyage anywhere with odds like that. But scurvy’s scourge continued right through to modern times with cases occurring still today in the malnourished.
As a deficiency disease, and possibly one of the easiest things to treat and cure, we humans have done a truly remarkable job of continuing to get scurvy. We’ve overlooked the cause of scurvy and have been bizarrely forgetful when the cure was stumbled across.
Of course, it was never a matter of just forgetting. Colonial trades and fear of poisoning played a role, as did a range of whacky treatments that confused everyone. And as always, a healthy dose of terrible science communication was thrown in there too.
Join us while we poke fun at the ridiculous amount of times this simple yet horrific disease kept resurfacing, and why lemons (not limes) reign supreme.
PREVIOUS EPS MENTIONED:
Ep 111 - Drinking your own urine?
SOURCES:
Jeremy Hugh Baron’s article in Nutrition Reviews: Sailors' scurvy before and after James Lind – a reassessment
Idle Words: Scott And Scurvy
Anu Lall: SCURVY, When Medical Arrogance killed 2,000,000 men
Curious Historian: The Scourge Of Scurvy
The Guardian: The secret of how Amundsen beat Scott in race to south pole? A diet of raw penguin
Journal of the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh: The role of scurvy in Scott’s return from the South Pole
The Journal of Nutrition: Scurvy and Cloudberries: A Chapter in the History of Nutritional Sciences
Leviathan: Ishmael's Recovery: Injury, Illness, and Convalescence in Moby-Dick
National Geographic: A Nightmare Disease Haunted Ships During Age of Discovery
Science History Institute: The Age of Scurvy
Special Care in Dentistry: The risk for scurvy in children with neurodevelopment disorders
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Rod 00:00
Wow, what an episode. I'm kind of trying to work out what to say. Because what I'm what I found out from William this time is science has a terrible memory. Boiling food almost always doesn't work better, which is shocking. I was shocked. fast boats are bad, delicious, delicious penguin meat now. Now, I never thought about a penguin steak before. But now we finished recording and I'm thinking all I want is a penguin steak. And basically, there's nothing about scurvy that isn't entirely fascinating and also a little bit sad making let's call it disappointing.
Will 00:34
It must have stung. I mean, physically, of course it was. It would have been painful. They're exhausted, they were starving, their bodies were wasting and they had wounds that just wouldn't heal.
Rod 00:47
So you just listed a whole bunch of stuff. Stinging is probably the bottom of my list of concerns. List of stuff.
Will 00:53
So there would have been that physical, stinging, but I think there would have been a mental, a mental sting a bit of a moral injury as well. Okay. You see, as Captain Robert Falcon Scott lay dying in his frozen tent in the middle of Antarctic wasteland in 1912.
Rod 01:10
But haven't you told me this one?
Will 01:11
And it's another bit of it's another bit of it? Yeah, he would have known that some of the symptoms he was seeing in his team had a consistent pattern. Okay. So, beyond the starvation and the cold and the frostbite, he knew that the exhaustion, the physical wasting the wounds that wouldn't heal. They also nostalgic thoughts of home. Yeah, well, that stinks. We're all symptoms of a disease that had killed millions of people over the last few centuries. And you know, of course, he and his men, they didn't want to join the millions to die of that. But that isn't why I reckon it would have stung, right. I reckon it would have stung, because he would have known that over 100 years earlier. They'd cure that disease, his employers, in fact, the people he was working for, had developed a cure that was nearly 100% working. And there he was in Antarctic wasteland. Not that dying of something previously had been cured. What was this? This condition was known as the scourge of the seas or the end of the explorers. The topic of today. Good old fashioned scurvy. Welcome to the wholesome show,
Rod 02:41
The podcast that gets lost in the whole of science.
Will 02:46
The Wholesome Show is me will grant
Rod 02:49
and me not Will Grant. Rod.
Will 02:52
That's it. You're gonna say your names. You say your name, but say your name.
Rod 02:56
Yeah. Okay, I'll try next time.
Will 02:57
So I'm gonna tell you a story today. The thing that gets me about this scurvy, as I'll tell you in a bit, is a horrendous disease, horrendously, we'll come to that. And killed shockingly, shockingly high numbers of people. Turns out not the hardest thing in the world to stop. But it just blows my mind that we had cures for it. We worked out a queue, and then we lost it. Just a quick note on some of the sources, a couple of great articles that we're drawing on for this one. So there's Jeremy Hugh Barron's article in Nutrition Reviews
Rod 03:30
Oh I've read that one don't run from home until everyone
Will 03:32
scurvy before and after James Lind reassessment and also much a check. loskis idle words post Scotland scurvy, scurvy has plagued humanity for as long as we've been farming, basically, as long as we've been farming, yes, it's weirdly, it's one of the first lifestyle diseases that we got. I'll tell you more about that in a second. But we didn't have scurvy when we were hunter gatherers. And then... Is that because the records were sketchy? No, yes, the records were sketchy, but we can dig up skeletons and stuff like that. And there's no evidence of scurvy in any hunter gatherer populations, but we can find evidence of scurvy in ancient agricultural societies.
Rod 04:14
Okay, mono cropping and specialisation and shit.
Will 04:18
Talking about scurvy, an Indian scientist named source Ruta from 600 BC, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Elder Pliny the Elder Planai, Pliny the Elder line, he talked about scurvy in the Roman army in Germany. So there you go, not just on the water. But Scott did not know that. He didn't know that, actually, for a long time, and I'll come to this a little bit later. People didn't know that land scurvy and sea scurvy. They didn't call them both scurvy. No. Were the same thing. They didn't connect them at all.
Rod 04:50
Is it because the symptoms are exactly the same? That's what didn't give it away. Hang on.
Will 04:55
The symptoms are remarkably specific as well. So it's weird that they didn't notice that It's weird.
Rod 05:01
Again, a learner gentleman came in and went, No,these people are on boats. These people boat scurvy, not on boats.
Will 05:08
It took a while to work that one out. I don't know why I don't know why. Yeah, there's there's a Chinese monk who talks about in the fifth century, and someone in the 13th century talking about the Crusades. So so that scurvy has been known about for a long time. Now, before we keep going, you want to know what Scurvy is like,
Rod 05:25
I really do. I've only heard snippets. But what I want now, and do not stop, I want every single detail, everyone. So like all if I'm not gagging, by the end of this, you have failed,
Will 05:38
like all diseases that we explore on the wholesome show. It was horrible and gross, and painful and deadly, and kills a lot of people so and stinky, stinky, normally starts, you get a little bit tired lethargy and malaise
Rod 05:51
I feel that now
Will 05:52
You start to get a little bit sore, a little bit short of breath. And then in particular, you start to get sore around the gums, then your legs become dark, either purple, or blue, or red. And this stains or spots all over them. So turns into what looks like a giant bruise or you get these black welts all over your legs thick, then your muscles start wasting away. So people kind of feeble and weak, scarce not able to move their bodies.
Rod 06:17
We have a timeline on this was that coming?
Will 06:19
It can start quite quickly, but it can start about three months after your voyage to see or something like that. So so it takes a while before you haven't right, but then you can collapse quite quickly over a few days. In those moments. They start hallucinating some of its this is when they develop a heightened yes no heightened sense of nostalgia and marvellous aesthetic experience of the world. Someone called it an intense pleasure taken in textures, shapes and colours.
Rod 06:44
This is a TV disease. If you go down here, you get this weird disease. You jump in the air, you shit yourself you cry once you fall over birth, and then you die and they all go through tick, tick, tick, tick. Yep. We love the whole world or something like that.
Will 06:58
They do. They do. There is weird moments of hallucination, nostalgia, that seem quite loving some that they're often also definitely having negative feelings as well have come to that
Rod 07:07
nostalgia as a biochemical reaction. It's very unusual.
Will 07:11
It's not now but I know as in when people were first discussing nostalgia, they thought of it mostly as a biochemical or as a disease. Super vivid dreams of food. Not shocking.
Rod 07:23
At Sea, though again, or even Scott of the Antarctic I gather, food became an issue
Will 07:28
It's not a surprise, not a surprise. So whilst they some of the hallucinations were potentially I won't call them upbeat, but a little bit.
Rod 07:38
Describe the symptoms fairly upbeat, real
Will 07:40
No most of the time, most of the time Boyles intense horror of horrifying pain, someone described it as a falling down of the whole soul. There are numerous accounts of hardened naval officers just sitting down and crying because the food they had expected to find that that hallucinated wasn't there.
Rod 07:57
Oh, so so it's the cartoon, that thing turns into a chicken, then you grab it, and it's still just a cup, literally,
Will 08:02
literally. So it seems like these people out on the sea voyage is starting to get the scurvy. They're imagining the delicious bowl of food that they want and let it disappear.
Rod 08:11
It's a bag of nails. It's a bag of nails. This is not museli.
Will 08:14
so your gums get worse and worse and worse. I'll read you a story about how bad they get in a sec.
Rod 08:19
That's one ofher the most about not detail. Just like apparently you'd get your teeth going loose and further
Will 08:26
teeth go loose teeth fall out so you all your teeth fall out. Old Wounds open up emotionally everything starts to stink. Like all of the all of the records I've got to this. They describe it as an unholy stick. Like it was just a barrel. They said it's like you're rotting from the inside. And this is in an era when everything stank.
Rod 08:49
You know everything and everyone was rotting from the inside and this is what they did. This is just a more exotic form of internal rotted Jesus special rotting unknown side. You've worked hard for this. You've sailed the seven seas you've gone to the Antarctic Arctic Antarctic, both both kind of both tarctics.
Will 09:05
Their breath, a filthy savour. One Chaplain God, one Chaplain blamed the particular stink on what he considered the most revolting aspect of scurvy, a strange plethora of gum tissue sprouting out of the mouth, they sort of grow out of your mouth, which immediately rotted and lent the victim's breath and abominable to have a lie down. grosses me out so much.
Rod 09:31
I can't stand it when you sit next to someone at a conference and they've got a strong coffee breath or rotten gum breath. Yeah, well, you get that too. I mean, obviously, it's pretty much 5050 In the current conferences I've been to but the deep coffee breath when someone clearly is drink nothing but coffee. They're probably hung over from the conference dinner, not beautiful and they lean into whispering like I thought about Barnum, what
Will 09:52
why are you thinking specifically conferences there are many thing about them. There are many times in places where people have gross breath.
Rod 09:58
This one sounds worse. worse than conference breath.
Will 10:01
Apparently towards the end, their bodies would start creaking and rattling because all of the connective tissue inside had dissolved. And so their bones and their organs would just sort of rattle and jingle against each other.
Rod 10:16
This is a cartoon disease This is entirely a cartoon disease. I mean, honestly, all I can see my head now is animations. Could be a symptom of scurvy as well.
Will 10:28
So imagine a boat full of people rattling all just stinking
Rod 10:32
like dead, everything.
Will 10:35
Sticking and rattling
Rod 10:36
will sneak up on them. I gotta, I gotta collect.
Will 10:39
Great. So here's a survivor account, written by an English surgeon in the 16th century. Upbeat. It rotted all my gums, which gave out a black and putrid blood. My thighs and lower legs were black and gangrenous, and I was forced to use my knife each day to cut into the flesh in order to release this blackened foul blood. I also use my knife on my gums, which were livid and growing over my teeth.
Rod 11:01
What are you doing? I'm cutting away the excess gum tissue that grew overnight. Sorry about the smell.
Will 11:06
When I cut away this dead flesh and caused much black blood to flow, I rinsed my mouth and teeth with my urine.
Rod 11:13
Rubbish you did? Yes, you did. And you know, when you're looking forward to the urine rinse. Things aren't going well. Hours of the trip. Oh, it was a big shit. What was the highlight, rinsing my mouth with my own little
Will 11:30
We rubbed them very hard with with his urine rinse course. And the unfortunate thing was that I could not eat does that was the unfortunate thing couldn't eat, desiring more to swallow than too many of our people died of it every day. And we saw bodies thrown into the sea constantly three or four at a time, apparently, towards the end. And they got very, very weak. You know, the stereotypical image. There's plenty of paintings and drawings of this is just like people that are pre corpse, basically.
Rod 11:54
Yeah, I think I've seen that actual painting that you've got. That looks familiar.
Will 11:57
Yeah, that they're basically pre corpses lying in laying in the bowels of the ships, and they're just on the way to dying. But apparently, they became so weak that if they exert themselves in any way, they are apt to swoon and die immediately rattled to death. Well, apparently some would be killed when a gunshot went off, like just the sound of the gunshot
Rod 12:17
shot could cause on the heart attack and join explosions
Will 12:21
or something heart attack, joint explosion, they just fought fell apart. It is so weak.
Rod 12:25
This is why I don't go on cruises.
Will 12:29
So as I said before, scurvy has been around since since agricultural times, and people have talked about it in plenty of different centuries. But it's really, it's one of the diseases that sort of boomed with the age of the explorers.
Rod 12:42
I gotta say on the symptoms because they wonderful. Yeah, uh, something that makes your teeth loosen and fall out to me is a definition of I'm so royally fucked right now. Whatever it is, whether it's scurvy or whatever. That to me is one of the most horrifying things and I mean, your joints, your stinking your black blood, your legs going purple and dancing on their own whatever. But feeling your teeth loosen. And then they start to drop out that sister or post apocalyptic aviation nightmare, like loosening
Will 13:09
Your body is disintegrating before your eyes. So weird. Is that the known cures for scurvy now? Really? Quite simple.
Rod 13:18
gunpowder?
Will 13:19
Not that
Rod 13:19
pushups?
Will 13:21
Not that
Rod 13:22
reading.
Will 13:22
People will recover super quickly. Yeah, like I don't know from what point like I don't think if gunshot can kill you, then you get a cure. Tomorrow you have a little Yes. And
Rod 13:33
most people know what the deficiencies Yes. But they didn't.
Will 13:36
They didn't. They didn't. And that's that was part of the problem. But they would recover quite quickly. And I think from some distance down into the depths of their pain, sort of
Rod 13:47
No gums lack of teeth and no connective tissue, but at least you're alive. They go. But yeah, let's go back to last week's episode. At least. I don't want to. This is dreadful. Taught me in the SARCO look, I'd take the SARCO over that. Even I wouldn't you know I'm anti death. I think death is a mistake.
Will 14:04
So just about every every big explorer journey of like the 15th 16th 17th 18th centuries, scurvy was dogging them, like like nothing else. So Vasco de Gama Ehrlich's Portuguese explorer went around the fountain of Eldorado youth, didn't he? He did hunt for Golden India. He got to India so went around the Cape of Good Hope. 100 out of his 160 Min crew died of scurvy.
Rod 14:29
Fuck me. The Reek ship of deaths didn't come in and rattling
Will 14:33
famous void was Commodore George Ansons. Four year six boats circumnavigation of the world. He left with 1800 crew
Rod 14:43
going back with 1795 no plus or minus
Will 14:47
came back with 188 that's less right so 90% of his crew died. Not all of them have scurvy but 1000 of them died. Died of scurvy. It's
Rod 14:56
like 60% died of scurvy. Yeah, a whole
Will 14:59
chunk of More died because they had like a scurvy ish pilot driving the boat. And he shipwrecked a boat while he was while he was
Rod 15:06
The island was a roast chicken. And he was really nostalgic.
Will 15:10
But yeah, it was shockingly high. So throughout this time, they just expected any long voyage, you're gonna get to lose 50% of your crew. And it could be up to 90%
Rod 15:20
Anyway want to come?
Will 15:22
This is why I was reading a bunch of these stories, recruitment methods for the British Navy at the time. I don't know if you've heard much of this, but they had this thing called the press gang. Yes. So they would just wander around the streets find drunk people press a coin into their hands. And that means you've accepted a contract and then contract done, and then you're on the boat and you wake up a day later on the boat out to sea
Rod 15:43
Blindingly hung over, probably been cajoled just to make sure you're compliant. And then you wake up in your own chunda and everyone else's.
Will 15:51
One historian said that throughout the age of explorers, scurvy killed more people at sea than anything else, then storms shipwrecks combat all other diseases.
Rod 16:00
Dragons didn't see their fruit. They don't want you to know the truth. Yeah, okay.
Will 16:03
Okay. Well, he could be I don't know what this is based on an estimated 2 million seamen during this time died because of scurvy.
Rod 16:09
What sort of periods? Right? 2 million over?
Will 16:11
Yeah, that's the thing over 2 million. Yeah, over
Rod 16:14
sounds huge period. It's nine times the population of Great Britain at the time.
Will 16:20
It was a lot of people, a lot of people but I think the key one is that thing of 50% of the crew will just die.
Rod 16:26
That's fucked up. So you got to we got a boat. We need 40 people to run this. But how many crew do you need. 80? Maybe 90, just in case? Why not just in case? Just to be sure. So you'll get a good rest.
Will 16:37
Yeah, that George Ansons crew, they couldn't get enough people to do that. Because there was a war going on at the time. And he was going to do a sort of he was doing distance bit of the war going around the ocean looking for Spanish or something. And so they emptied in an invalid hospital to crew his ships. So as all people already invalid, yeah, they're already invalid. And so they just dragged them out of the hospital. Like 300 300 old guys. They're like 60 or 70.
Rod 17:03
What are the criteria? Do at least three quarters of your limbs work? Can you hear one ear will do.
Will 17:10
Just just the idea of being on a ship like that, where it's staffed by people that are all literally in an invalid hospital already,
Rod 17:17
Does invalid at that point mean? You basically there till you die. It's not a combo and possibly, possibly. Like it's not a strong recommendation for getting on that boat. It's crewed by invalids.
Will 17:29
I'm not joining, but you get to see the world. So I travelled around well, a percentage of it and most of them died. So you'll be surprised. Like all medical journeys throughout olden times, they had some cures that weren't what you would expect in the modern world, did they? Yeah. I'm not gonna go through them all. I don't mind. So the guys in the Crusades, they thought scurvy was caused by eating eel during Lent. During land during Lent, you couldn't eat meat, so they ate eel, and then they got scurvy.
Rod 18:02
So it wasn't it were eating meat at all, but it was the eel was the only thing available
Will 18:06
I think so. So they blamed it on eel. It spoiler it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't causing it at all. In fact, they probably would do good.
Rod 18:14
A lot of weird things have what you need for scurvy. I was surprised.
Will 18:17
It's surprisingly, I've seen it's surprisingly common. Yeah, yeah. So as we said before, there's the people that were washing their mouth out with the urine. I thought that would help I think, I think it's something to do with the gums and they thought urine might be able to
Rod 18:28
look and to be fair, it's not gonna do any harm. It's gonna do other goods. If you want to know more about drinking your own urine episode, Episode A while ago.
Will 18:36
And your favourite mercury, of course,
Rod 18:38
I love mercury,
Will 18:39
there was a guy called Francis Spilsbury. He was selling Spilsbury drops, which are a combination of mercury and antimony, which is basically more mercury and that's no that's what I'm Wolverines made out of. Now, he's not add on antium but my favourite my favourite wacky cure came from a guy. He was a an 18th century sexologist from Scotland
Rod 19:00
Get down 18th century sexologist. Yeah, what do you do sexologist what gets me a lead?
Will 19:05
Well, one of the things he invented now come to come to his his scurvy cure and a steam driven
Rod 19:10
Max about masturbation device. Please, please, please, please not too far off.
Will 19:13
Yes he calls it the celestial bed. It was a big bed like a 12
Rod 19:17
Wrong for every orifice and an extra one for the weekend
Will 19:21
not far off his wonderworking edifice. He was trying to help people conceive it was a big bed 12 by nine feet, which is bigger than the king size bed, and it's got to be canopy over it. Covered in musical automata fresh flowers and a pair of live turtle doves, stimulating oriental fragrances and the theory of gases were released from a reservoir inside the dome. A tilting inner frame put couples in the best position to conceive and their movements set off music from organ pipes which breathe out celestial sounds and movements whose intensity increased with the odour of the beds occupants. So this is this is 18th century per it's a bed
Rod 19:59
job's done. shit on you as you root harder.
Will 20:02
It makes music
Rod 20:03
Well it makes noise. I'm gonna call music a bit of heavy lifting. Like I don't know if you ever fucked on a piano on mine.
Will 20:11
I know a lot of people have you didn't date Yeah.
Rod 20:13
What I'm not hearing when you fucking on a piano is theoretical? Is music sound?
Will 20:19
Yes, it would be a talent, it would be absolutely be a talent if you could manage the fuck and play a song with the fucking
Rod 20:26
A concerto with four butt cheeks and two balls. That's amazing. It's complicated, but it's worth it, man.
Will 20:33
Anyway, so his cure his cure of scurvy. You'll be surprised he reckoned it killed a bunch of other things was called Earth bathing so they bury you alive? Yes, not all of you. He said that long stints in the old fostering bosom of our original mother, and that he meant soil opened up the pores and leach toxins from the body. Earth bathing was considered good for many ailments, but it was particularly effective for scurvy, venereal disease, gout, rheumatism, a few other things. Also obesity. So he did a bunch
Rod 21:02
Sure I'm gonna bury you, including your arms actually lose weight.
Will 21:06
There's an article from The Times The London Times 14th of October 1791. Earth bathing. Dr. Graham does. Dr. James Graham is now at Sheffield. And he and a young woman on Wednesday and Thursday, buried themselves up to the lips. In Earth Top or bottom?
Rod 21:23
It's got to be the bottom. So you'll have to breathe, because...
Will 21:25
Well, he did lectures like this. So. So he and he and a woman would go up on stage strip down and then sort of they go into these pits and then bury themselves up to their lips.
Rod 21:40
Is everybody sitting comfortably because I sure as hell out. Here we go. Look, I have an opportunity to rejig one of my courses next year. And I'm thinking now i You've given me what I need is God goal is definitely what's missing lecture well buried up to the lip. I don't know why he didn't stop at the chin. No. That's because you got to be committed. And I'm assuming to if you properly buried, the moving of the jaw up and down would be complex, or at least a little bit. There'll be a bit of resistance.
Will 22:08
Maybe they're continually putting little bits of extra soil as he puts it away. Just filling up the mountain
Rod 22:15
Up to your bottom lip fairly well tamped down I feel like that would be
Will 22:19
I don't know. saying there's there's the gentleman getting poured some soil on him.
Rod 22:24
That's a dude. Yeah, these are browned and robust. Yeah, many many can be round and robust. No, it isn't. He looks like a beautiful boticilean.
Will 22:31
Here's some. Here's some ladies. This is this is cartoonish. That's not her lips that are above the soil. No, that's her bosoms. But she's got a nice hat on she does. And her hands are in the air like she just don't care. So I'm really quite surprised that 1790s They're happy to step off and and bury themselves in the dirt.
Rod 22:50
There is a whole subset of dirty dirty people. And I don't mean soil.
Will 22:54
People People always always actively nudes people always have been but Jane Austen never mentioned it. There's all I'm saying.
Rod 23:02
That's your go to. Well, if it's not in Jane Austen,
Will 23:05
the thing is sailors took on this theory, though, they thought something on there because there ain't no soil on a ship. So maybe we could do that.
Rod 23:13
Because that's what a boat needs.
Will 23:14
They did wait. There are people bringing soil to cure scurvy.
Rod 23:18
What's in your chest. Just four tonne of soil for tonight, and I've got one of them. roadbeds with an organ.
Will 23:26
I wonder if you use it up like if you bury yourself in the soil, or at least he uses use up all your older leaching power or something.
Rod 23:32
Yeah it loses its thingy, like a coffee filter.
Will 23:36
Like every night do you sneak down to your your box of soil and just bury yourself?
Rod 23:41
And also I mean boats of that era? Yeah. Not famously spacious. No, no. And there may have been a couple of other things you might want to take.
Will 23:49
There's a story of one of Anson you know, the guy that circumnavigated the world may therefore mentioned, is that what they called it, they got to an island or something like that. And he cut out a piece of turf and buried his mouth into the hole to try and eat the soil to fix this. Okay, Vitus Bering a Danish navigator. He was the one that the Bering Strait is named after he died of scurvy half buried in the ground. So he got he got to an island, buried himself with the idea that this would help with the scurvy. It didn't
Rod 24:16
Alas, it did not.
Will 24:18
But here's the thing, while there's a whole bunch of our wacky friends that are doing what they do, coming up with quack treatments for scurvy for pretty much the whole time. People have known the right treatment they knew or they didn't know why it worked. But there have been people recommending treatments for scurvy as far back as we've got writing on scribe, so 1500 BCE, so 3500 years ago, he said, Hey, there's scurvy, and he also said, You know what to do with this, some onions,
Rod 24:46
Some onions, but they were to call it skirt up and was possibly so people would have missed it. They knew how to read hieroglyphics or whatever it was. That's exactly what the Greeks use. And they called Egypt you don't go glyphs.
Will 24:57
So they used onions and and there's other people that are using Onion Juice still today.
Rod 25:01
Then what did they use onion, so to speak, I don't know, the only curious to stick an onion up your nose and let it Osmos it's got to you know, that was all that I put put it in your bum. Because if it's something that you shouldn't do is probably going to be better for you if you got a weird disease, obviously rectal, and how and you have to keep it in there until it's gone. That's how you cure scurvy. That's why sailors walk strangely. doesn't know that. It's one theory.
Will 25:30
What is it the fifth century Chinese monk that I said before? If he said carry ginger, when you're out on ships, that works, too? Yeah. When I could grow ginger plants in the soil in this in the soil.
Rod 25:40
Hey, guys, what if instead of burying people,
Will 25:42
right, there's actually some stories have come to this in a bit. People growing quite a few things on ships. And then the owners of the ship say, Dude, the tree roots are actually destroying your ship. We can't do this anymore. So I'm preferable. Viking navigators. Yeah. So around the year 1000. They went to America. Yeah, they carried barrels of cloudberries that work to this famous story in 1535. French navigator landed in Canada, so not very long. They hadn't you know, Columbus was only 40 years earlier. And this is his account, landed in Canada and there are disease camp on the sailors. Their gums swelled up, they couldn't eat, their teeth fell out. Their legs became purple and swollen. Many of them started hallucinating and drop dead.
Rod 26:20
Sounds familiar.
Will 26:21
Some locals also got the symptoms. I'm not sure why the locals got symptoms. Maybe it was, I think, I think it was during winter or something like that. And they cured themselves instantly, with some juice extracted from a tree called Anneda. They had known the cure for centuries, the French sailors yucks Cartier, he distrusted the locals so much that he thought the leaves were a plot to kill his men. Days became weeks, weeks became months, more sailors fell sick, a bunch of bunch died, got personality disorders, and then he's like, Alright, let's try this. Try this medicine that the indigenous people are offering to us really nicely.
Rod 26:50
That is clearly making them better as far as we can. A bunch of diet and vengo personality, you just watch.
Will 26:54
You could watch them eating it. Yeah. And they got better. And he's like, no, no. So he eventually tried it. And they're all miraculously cured straightaway, unrelated. And he's like, no. He's like, this is wild, over God finding a cure for the deadly disease. He documented his findings and went around telling the whole world how the Indians cured seafarers illness with plant juice, he thought he would be hailed as a hero, but it wasn't taken up that much further,
Rod 27:20
because he identified with the Indigenes and therefore was terrible. I don't know why, but no one wants to play.
Will 27:26
I think the point the point is, there's a bunch of people that have known but people just sort of dropped off and got other weird theories about what was causing it. In 1601. The English naval surgeon James Lancaster, performed probably the first semi scientific investigation, he had three ships, four ships. In one of them, he gave them lemon juice every morning. Yep, the others he gave nothing. And the one with lemon juice, they did much better. So there's a bunch of other stories throughout this time of people using a bunch of different things. Lemon juice comes up over and over again. But also there's other other things like the Dutch were using scurvy grass, and horseradish, and watercress, they all would have worked. Swedish were using pine shoots in their beer. I love that attitude. When you look around in this story, there's a bunch of traditional histories that say I was cured this way and cute that way. They're not true at all. Like that, like the thing is, cures have been known for a very, very long time. And people managed to forget it through. Well, let's say bad science, also, and then we rediscovered again. So things started to change with James Lind Yes, just handsome gentleman here. He was, he wasn't the first person at all to recommend citrus juice to cure scurvy. And even when he did, he wasn't very good at it. But anyway, he did. He did something new, and invented the clinical trial. He was born in Edinburgh in 1716. He joined the Navy at 15 as a surgeon's mate, and then was sort of at sea for constantly for eight years. In the channel, the Mediterranean, the West Indies. Well, he became the surgeon on the HMS Salisbury. And before it sailed in December 1746 47. Sorry, he decided to let's do a trial. Let's let's try some different things to see what actually helps with scurvy. He got 12 sailors that were sick, divided into the six groups of two. So two sailors each and each group and gave them a bunch of different cures. So give them the normal diet dirt. Sadly, no doubt they've moved on from dirt by this time by burying okay, no dirt. No.
Rod 29:26
So things could plausibly be treatment.
Will 29:28
Yeah, things that they thought might be not so one got caught of cider every day.
Rod 29:33
That should be fine. Probably be nice. A quart, isn't that like three litres? I feel like a quart is quite large. That's what if I was
Will 29:40
obviously you come to the wholesome show, and numbers or your precise measurements? Yeah. Okay. Well, here's a nice one. I can I can work this one. Another group got 25 drops of sulfuric acid to eat three times a day. You just have 25 drops of just have sulfuric acid. They want the most pure Tthey really thought at this time that acid was the key thing.
Rod 30:00
Oh, citrus link I get that.
Will 30:02
Yeah, exactly. Another group got two spoonfuls of vinegar. So what he's doing, he's trying, he's trying the best types of acid to work on scurvy. Another group got half a pint of seawater.
Rod 30:13
Fuck off. Drink it. No, I bet you agreed
Will 30:18
I would find it so hard to drink half a pint of seawater. I think my mouth just just,
Rod 30:24
I mean, it'll tell you what, 300 mils or something. But still, I mean, even you're in the ocean, it's nice, fresh Beach, you're happy. And someone says deliberately take a gulp and I really, really don't want
Will 30:34
my body does not want to do that.
Rod 30:35
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Not that one.
Will 30:38
Where does it go? Oh, spicy paste? Oh, I don't know. It was it was in it. I think there was some nutmeg and tamarind or something like that. But he just just got a bunch of things sort of pounded them up, made a little spicy, paste.
Rod 30:51
Make the Smosh does it seem tangy? Yes, it does. How do you feel
Will 30:55
there you go tangy might have it. And the last group got two oranges in a lemon every, every day. They ran out of oranges and lemons on day six. But happily, group six, the orange and lemon group that were already back at work. Like they had recovered that quickly. And I don't know how bad they were, I don't know if teeth falling out stage. But they've recovered straightaway. And so this is often hailed as the moment when scurvy was cured
Rod 31:20
but wasn't
Will 31:21
He quite the Navy. And then he went to write his giant book treaties on scurvy containing An Inquiry into the Nature causes and cure of that disease together with a critical chronological view of what has been published on the subject. That was the title, long title. You know,
Rod 31:33
imagine that same paragraph title and the book one page, but he's got
Will 31:37
he's got like this brand new study. No one's ever done it and he buries that back on page 200 of this 400 page book.
Rod 31:43
the ability to add words it's quite remarkable. Here's the sentence
Will 31:46
where he says the key results okay, you take a breath, as I shall have occasion elsewhere to take notice of the effects of other medicines in this disease. I saw here only observed that the results of my experiments was that oranges and lemons were the most effectual remedies for this dis temperate see. So he has said they were the most effective but
Rod 32:03
proclivity is start with everything that doesn't matter buried is so fucking send starts with a whole bunch of extra garbage. And then the point.
Will 32:11
Yeah, so the thing is, it was mostly ignored, like the Navy just went, I don't know,
Rod 32:18
buried on page 200. And a sentence that starts with a whole bunch of caveats, or background doesn't really ignored this is missed.
Will 32:25
He didn't do very much work pushing it either. And there's a there's a really sad story, where some people said he might have just been way too humble. And there's a sad story later in life when he was a member of a naval board that awarded a 5000 prize for someone for still that could turn salt water into fresh water that he himself had invented 20 years earlier.
Rod 32:48
So he just quietly watched
Will 32:50
he just quietly went Yes, that's great. That's great. He fuck he'd invented it. And yet he still gave the prize out or the board did and then it's like fuck off Lindy you again Shut up you didn't
Rod 33:03
know and 900 words on that too mate. Come on, let's see how many words you can write about getting salt out of water.
Will 33:08
So that's ridiculous. So this is this is sort of people are starting to work towards a cure here. 7047 But the Navy didn't pick it up. No one really paid much attention. 20 years later, when Captain Cook started his sailing around the world. He didn't really include lemons or oranges in his anti scurvy treatment. So he didn't. Why would he? Yeah, no, no, when he was ladies. Yeah, 20 years ago, he took what's called McBride's malt. Which is like, I think it's a bit a malt beer or something. Like it's not all the watch from a beer.
Rod 33:37
You do homebrew? Fuck you don't drink what's left? Yeah, that's it. Have you seen what's left? Is it gross? Oh, that's what it looks like liquid fungal evil. Like it's not great. It doesn't smell good. You can tell it's related to beer. But you can also see it is emphatically not beer.
Will 33:54
But it's a multiverse isn't true. At least it's sweet. So he tried that. And he tried sauerkraut. And he and he tried portable vegetables or no portable soup. Sorry,
Rod 34:03
I don't know what I was going to say. I think most vegetables are fairly portable, ultimately, like a portable soup.
Will 34:08
But also importantly, he took every chance that he could to grab fresh vegetables from islands and things like that. And he tried to keep them as fresh as he could washed or still between layers of fruit. And in fact, it's really weird. He so often held up Captain Cook as conquering scurvy. He came back and people you know often attribute this to the sauerkraut and he didn't he didn't say that at all. He said that Oranges and Lemons are too expensive to use. I recommend the malt, the wort, McBride's wort, rather than lemon juice to use
Rod 34:41
I'm not going to argue that it doesn't work I'm going to argue that if you put a pint of that and a pint of seawater in front of me it would take me a long time to decide which one I was going to do and I still don't know
Will 34:50
neither of them work. Sea water does not work I'm shocked and the malt does not work I'm often work so Okay, no, it didn't. So it's so it's a To weird thing that Cook is often held as conquering scurvy. But his advice to other people was literally bad advice. And he did keep scurvy down on his boats not keep it away, but sounds a
Rod 35:12
bit like by accident, was it? I thought he was doing something else?
Will 35:15
I think so. It's the fact that they picked up lots of vegetables and use vegetables as much as they could
Rod 35:20
but also drink this sea water. He didn't drink sea water but you know, I'm so okay, we need vegetables for other now drink this horrible malt. What? Bullshit.
Will 35:28
But gradually, people started to pay a bit more attention. Yeah, in the 1760s he gets some French doctors who are saying that's good, but they're navel administered said not not, we're not gonna we're not gonna do the lemon juice and French and obviously getting in the way, you get some some guy William Northcutt. He accepted that scurvy might be something to do with lack of fresh fruit and vegetables. And he recommended you know, maybe we take a quintessence of oranges and lemons on board with you justice. Just just the zest just a spicy but but people are still selling this stuff like the Spilsbury drops the mercury and there's still a lot of crap cures going on. But things really started to turn with with two key events. One was a siege of Gibraltar for the British Navy in 1780, which led to dreadful ravages of scurvy until they captured a boatload of oranges and lemons coming from Malaga. And oh, that's so nice to get some citrus. Well, it's just coming past and they're like, quick capture that Spanish. Yeah. And then they mixed the Spanish orange and lemons with what was it? Five to 10 gallons of brandy with 60 gallons of lemon juice and dug that out amongst the troops
Rod 36:33
and a litre of mercury, just
Will 36:35
just to know mercury, and mercury and suddenly they're like, hey, they're kind of they kind of worked really
Rod 36:39
well look at no one losing their teeth. And then,
Will 36:43
so Gilbert Blaine came along and what he had that James Lind didn't, James Lind was poor and I'm assuming Gilbert Blaine was a knight. And he got really close with an admiral and then he brought some econometric data. Okay, so he trained as a medical doctor, and then he became a personal physician to Admiral Rodney, who was a famous Admiral,
Rod 37:04
Admiral Rodney, so he went by his first name. That's very gangster. I
Will 37:07
think that was his last name. I might have been Rodney Rodney.
Rod 37:09
No, no, no, it's last name is Rodney.
Will 37:12
He accompanied the admiral on a trip to the West Indies, to help treat his gout while he was going. And then while he's doing it, he's like, why don't why don't you keep some, some records of all of your sailors cookie and all of your diagnosis and what happens to them so he starts tabulating it all. And he's like, one in seven of the sailors of your squadron has died of scurvy. And only 59 So that was so it was like 1500 people had been killed by scurvy. Only 59 killed by the enemy. The number of deaths that you've got here would man three more ships, so you're losing a lot of people here and suddenly like Okay, now then. Then he calculated how much would that cost in oranges or limes? He's like every 50 oranges or lemons might be considered the equivalent of a human in the Navy that will save a life in general we'll save that many lives.
Rod 38:01
You're gonna tell me how much that is? Because I mean for us now 50 Oranges you like that? That's I feel like that'd be less than human life.
Will 38:06
I was looking this morning at coles and you can big bag of oranges three kilos for I think it was $8 or something like
Rod 38:14
that. So yeah, I feel like a human life is worth at least 2440 oranges.
Will 38:18
Yeah, so 40 oranges to payments back then. The only way to get an orange is to write a spaceship. I love this. This is the the attitude to human life in the Navy the time that yeah, 50 oranges or lemon. That's the equivalent of a man
Rod 38:32
that can imagine the scenario going hang on, we got to think about
Will 38:34
get the calculator, tabulate this shit. So they got the numbers. And in 1796, the Sick and Hurt Commission agreed to supply all Navy ships on foreign service with lemon juice, and 7999 all ships on the British coast. They went hard in for this because the Napoleonic wars started there was at the French Revolution. And those were significant between 1795 and 1814. The Admiralty issued 1.6 million gallons of lemon juice. Sweet lemons were imported especially from the Mediterranean region. Lord Nelson turned Sicily into a vast lemon juice factory. They say that it was possible then for the British Navy to blockade French ports for years at a time, so they just parked the boats outside the ports blocking Napoleonic power, because lemon juice made that possible. So didn't waste one die waste away and die of scurvy. Some people reckon of all the means which defeated Napoleon, lemon juice and the Carronade gun. were the two most important Can we talk about the gun? No, I didn't look into the gun just yet. But they were really stressing the idea that lemon juice is how we won this war. because it allowed us to blockade these ports and our money.
Rod 39:41
It's always something dumb, like edible shoelaces, boom. That's how we beat the Canadians. And, you know, you know the story. It's as old as time.
Will 39:49
I mean, it'd be a great war story. If edible shoelaces were suddenly until the next week, but the weird thing is, you know, they literally did they cured scurvy in their fleet. And for the next 100 years, they They basically never really had scurvy at all in their fleet. I'd say
Rod 40:03
like in any sport, getting rid of your unforced errors is really important. And letting your own troops die before the enemy kills them is pretty big, unforced error. I think that's what's going on on the team. I'm on Team lemon juice now.
Will 40:15
But then this is so weird that they had scurvy cured. And then something happened. And they forgot about it. I'll tell you after this break. So a couple of things happened throughout the 19th century. So they started with a working cure. That meant the British could keep a boat outside of French port for years on end, just sitting there. Not doing anything, but they could stop them from dying of scurvy. Now previously be like a three month voyage, and you'd start to get people dying of scurvy. But not anymore.
Rod 40:42
What a boring job in the Navy, though, what do you do sit in a boat, and that's it. Drink lemon juice. No more mercury, though a bit disappointed.
Will 40:49
I wait a little bit till I get the hallucinations, then.
Rod 40:54
Let's enjoy the party. But no. drink lemon juice, look at the French.
Will 40:58
So the first thing that happened is in 1845, the governor of Bermuda said hey, let's let's grow them down here in Bermuda. I can grow limes rather than lemons down here. And we'll keep it in the colony. And so they thought okay, rather than coming from Sicily, it's not our territory. We can keep it all in the family here. Well, that makes sense. So they switched from lemons from Sicily to limes from the West Indies. You think that sounds the same? But weirdly, yeah. Then when they were getting them from Bermuda, they'd ship them to Liverpool boil and bottle them and move the lime juice out to the out to the Navy and
Rod 41:35
Why do the British love to boil everything before they put it in the mouth. Literally pour. I'm gonna boil it, but they boil it pipes. Don't boil everything.
Will 41:45
It might be part of the problem here.
Rod 41:46
Not all food needs boiling.
Will 41:48
Then also, ships got faster and faster and faster. Yeah. So a lot of people have talked about this. And they literally did have a cure for scurvy. In the Napoleonic times. They were taking lemon juice, couple of spoonfuls every day, getting it from Sicily, which was right nearby. And it worked. It was a cure. Over the next 100 years, boats got faster. And they switched to limes. And they had more ports that they went into. So what a lot of people have argued is they actually lost their cure. The fact was that they didn't spend as long as sea. So couple 100 years earlier, less important. Yeah, this thing couple of 100 years earlier, you could go for this four year journey around the world. But suddenly, you know, in the middle of the 19th century, you could sail between ports all the time pick up new fresh fruits and vegetables
Rod 42:37
or something things and a half years now. I mean, what's the fuss?
Will 42:39
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, not not, you know, so they weren't at see nearly as long Yeah. And so became less important, it became less important to have a cure. And the point is, then they stopped actually noticing that their cure didn't work. So So in 1875, they started to do a bunch of Arctic and Anna Antarctic expeditions. Vice Admiral Sir George Strong Nares Fuck yes. Okay, I've now finally decided what to change my name to just strong said George Strong.
Rod 42:55
Strong is it hyphenated was that his middle name
Will 43:07
as his middle name? Middle and strong.
Rod 43:14
What do we call him George yet? Obviously. No raise because it's your name, sweetheart. midline? Elephant. No, that seems weird.
Will 43:23
Week.
Rod 43:24
Let's go with wait. Yeah. quirky. Yeah, strange, strong.
Will 43:29
That's a look. Okay. It could be a lawsuit on his strong, they gave him a job to reach to the North Pole via Greenland. This is the sort of time when they thought there would be an open polar sea. Or you could go along the Greenland coast and get across to the Pacific give us time. Anyway, they said take a sledging party see how far north you can get. But the expedition was a fiasco. As soon as they got off the boat, two of the men in the sledging party developed scurvy within days of leaving the ship. Within five weeks, half the man was sick. And despite having laid depots with plentiful supplies for the return journey, they were barely able to make it back. A rescue party sent to intercept them found that the lime juice so they brought the lime juice Navy had been using failed to have its usual dramatic effect, Flawed lime juice, all of the people that stayed on the ship waiting for them, and took their daily dose also got scurvy. So suddenly, they've gone like 100 years where we're not getting scurvy, but they start to do something different. And they go, Holy shit. So this is the boiling. This is not a cure anymore. Yeah, what had happened in that time, is that limes are far less effective than lemons, even though they thought they were more effective. But then anything anytime you start boiling things, things disappear, things disappear. And they didn't they didn't.
Rod 44:45
boiled vegetables are peas normally grey. Yes, they are.
Will 44:47
So this perplexed the Navy. They're like what the hell?
Rod 44:50
We boiled it.
Will 44:51
Yeah, exactly. We made it stronger by boiling oil. We made it more.
Rod 44:57
steam coming up steam is weakness leaving the food
Will 45:00
literally so there are so many stories here of boiling as as the cure, there was
Rod 45:06
a change called vibrant green. And now that it's grey. Grey's good.
Will 45:11
This is what they thought they thought if you get lemon juice and you boil it down to stronger, a ROB of lemons stronger. There was another one. This isn't I didn't get this quite into it. There was a lot of a lot of scurvy in the American Civil War. And then the cure that they had was compressed desiccated vegetable cake or something like that. They had this vegetable cake that needed to be boiled for six hours before you could eat.
Rod 45:34
That's how you get the goodness out. Everyone knows that that this is what I do is I want a vegetable stir fry. But before you fry it boil for a day. Jesus Christ, pour the gooey residue into the fry pan. Add coriander
Will 45:48
Yeah, so looking boiling. So suddenly they had an inquiry, and they just perplexed they're like citrus juice doesn't work, even though we've been using it for 100 years
Rod 46:00
and the title of the report, but we boiled it.
Will 46:02
It says here, the Navy sadly admitted there is no question of doubt that we have not in lime juice the true preventative of scurvy.
Rod 46:10
Yes, it's the lime juice is fault.
Will 46:11
Wasn't that long after that they figured out what was happening. The riddle was solved by pure luck. So 1907, Axl Holst and Theodore frolic in Oslo, were studying a similar disease to scurvy Berry Berry. They were studying with pigeons. And they thought, oh, let's switch to a mammal model. And just by pure luck, they chose guinea pigs because there's three animals that can't generate vitamin C.
Rod 46:38
Oh, yeah. Yeah, this rings a bell.
Will 46:40
Okay, it's us, and monkeys, and guinea pigs. And so just by pure luck, the obvious they fed the guinea pig, pure grind diet, so no vegetables, no, no meats or anything like that. It's just pure grain. And the animal didn't show any signs of berry berry, but very quickly, sickened and died in a way that resembled pretty much human scurvy. So they're like rocking that's so weird. They had never seen scurvy in an animal before. To be fair there probably never looked at a few years later, Casimir funk of the lister Institute, classified beriberi, scurvy and rickets, as three different deficiency diseases, or lacking the organic basis of what he called vitamins from vitamins and different vitamins. So So basically, over that period, they established that there was some sort of vitamin that is lacking when people don't have scurvy. And it was just it was just luck that they chose the guinea pig. Because here's the thing, right?
Rod 47:31
So this guy came up with the vitamin idea. Or this was sort of, you know, this is where vitamins came out. He was vitamin guy, he's vitamin guy. That's good timing. Because vitamins in itself is a bizarre story.
Will 47:42
Well, it's something interesting in the sense of vitamins is that, because we can't generate it, just about every animal can. And heaps and heaps of plants do. They couldn't actually find it because it was so hard to isolate, it was in just about everything. This is the thing, they couldn't find the what it was that would cure different people because it was everywhere. Everywhere they looked, they felt it. And so there's nothing to say, Oh, this is unique about
Rod 48:09
the one thing we did was we don't have it to whatever it is,
Will 48:13
but well, it decays and this is why we need to eat it. irregularly, you don't need a whole whole bunch of it, it decays in the body, we use it up. But also it decays in fresh fruit or vegetables, or by boiling it. So the more that you cook something, you destroy your your vitamin C. And so if you're if you're a long time at sea, then all of the vitamins or the vitamin C, out of whatever it is slowly disappear. So this is why lemons worked. Lemons definitely have vitamin C, they have twice as much vitamin C as as limes. There are other things that have more vitamin C. But when they're outside the French ports, they could get the lemons from Sicily not very far. They're still pretty fresh, still chockablock with vinyl. Right? Right, right, right. Coming from the Caribbean, the lions had half the amount of vitamin C already right, then they'd sail them across the Atlantic up to Liverpool boiler fuck out, particularly in copper copper pots, good idea. Copper made it
Rod 49:09
you know why? Because I ran out of lead pots.
Will 49:11
And they so all of the things that they did actually destroyed the vitamin C. So it didn't work. But it was just masked by the fact that they weren't doing the same sorts of things. They weren't doing these slow, long ocean voyages. And so they didn't know what was what was causing it at all. They thought that they had a whole bunch of theories of what they thought was causing it, they thought it might have been a purification of the inside organs or something like that. It took a long time to work out it was just deficiency. And it was just fruit and vegetables. But
Rod 49:37
what a wacky constellation of like, related variables that weren't clearly related. That's amazing. So that's amazing.
Will 49:43
But the thing is, people had known for centuries it's fresh fruit and vegetables, you know, in all of those sailors accounts and all of the the ancient accounts carry a cloudberries or something like that it occurred and in their defence, it's when you're going further. When you go for a long time. It's hard to keep Keep it in those fresh fruits and vegetables because they decay that vitamin C.
Rod 50:04
So assumption also is that the more ancient ones were the more dubious technologies weren't doing the long trips, at least
Will 50:10
that's it was That's it when they discovered this, they looked at the British Army and the Royal Navy's lime juice that they were still using at the time. And and they didn't test had no vitamin C, and they're like, it's not actually working.
Rod 50:21
But we boiled it.
Will 50:22
In 1928. Alexander sent Z yogi, he isolated the anti scurvy substance. He called it first x uronic acid, and then ascorbic acid ascorbic, then vitamin C,
Rod 50:33
I like ascorbic.
Will 50:34
So it's not clear if Scott in the Antarctic actually had scurvy. There's a lot of people that are debating what's going on. But the symptoms seem to line up.
Rod 50:41
What are the competing theories though? Like what else do they think you have
Will 50:44
exhaustion and and cold? And
Rod 50:48
I can see, because when I'm really tired, my legs do change colour. I mean, you've probably noticed this Excel sheet for that. Yeah, absolutely. So like, Fuck, I'm tired.
Will 50:58
But I think I think that there is some of the wounds not healing. And it's probably it's probably the fact that he had early stage scurvy deficiency. They weren't getting any vitamin C. It's known that they weren't, and it was making everything that they were doing harder. But the thing that blows my mind is that the guy that raced against him Amundsen. No one's heard of him. Here's a guy that got to the South Pole first. And what they decided to do is eat fresh penguin. They wouldn't cook it
Rod 51:26
No cooking was awful. But friends religious patriots better than fresh Penguin, live penguin.
Will 51:31
He described it. He described it as really the most delicious steak ever. Some people said, Man, he's just the guy that tries wacky things just for just to do it. So what they used to do is they discovered that the penguins liked music. And so, so literally, they would play a trumpet.
Rod 51:50
I'm gonna play Revelli
Will 51:51
they would play a trumpet to a little tune the penguins would start to dance and they murdered them. And no, they didn't murder them. They would tie them up. Like they've got a little leash. They've got a little leash around their feet, and then they had a little flock of penguins that they can go to one at a time murder one at a time. Eat fresh eat a penguin, penguin sashimi fresh while you're going across Antarctica. Scott?
Rod 52:13
Hello, Sailor penguin a day. I mean, now that I know the what happens after that image that you've just showed me. Sickening.
Will 52:20
Scott had a terrible time in Antarctica. They died horrible deaths. But Amundsen got to the South Pole. Fabulous. Got back. They gained weight.
Rod 52:32
What was it like? Oh?
Will 52:39
So there you go. Would you read penguin? Yeah, sure. I'm happy to I'm happy to eat most things. If it's if it's prepared by someone that knows what they're doing.
Rod 52:47
I'm going to Antarctica in a couple of months. I know that.
Will 52:50
I feel no, look, if I'm quick. Maybe I can grab one. I wouldn't be the one that does that.
Rod 52:55
Like, what if on the second one,
Will 52:56
if someone says this is okay.
Rod 53:00
Because I've heard about these tours, you go on and every now and they get this troublemaker who wants to touch the animals and they're told don't touch the animals. It's one of those find one of those people who's has proclivities and like push them towards a pair and go, Oh my God, look at this guy. And then I have a young one, like a smoke screen and I take it back to the boat and say, Sure, cook us up a penguin would you champ
Will 53:17
report back to me? How will I so we arrived from the buyer in Tasmania recently? And they've got little little fairy penguins and they're delicious. Oh my god, that beer bottle size and then the most adorable little animal in the world. And I would feel like you'd have to be an intense carnivore, to not think I am the most murdery murdering person ever
Rod 53:37
Have you ever eaten quail. Seen quail's live? Adorable. The eggs are like tiny little sugar Easter Eggs like even eating the egg would make you feel like an angle.
Will 53:46
I do like I do like animals that you can get into your mouth and one guy then I feel like a giant we're talking to eating still right?
Rod 53:51
Yeah, just making sure.
Will 53:55
So there you go. We, we had a cure, but we lost it. And it was all because people got a bit confused about what was actually doing the curing.
