Why do pirates say scurvy

The disease prevalent among pirates was caused by a deficiency of vitamin C thanks to limited supplies of fruit while at sea for long periods of time. According to Wikipedia, the name scurvy comes from the the latin word scorbutus, which also makes reference to ascorbic acid, which is the active part of vitamin C that has a positive effect on human health.

Pirates suffering from scurvy would feel lethargic and generally weary followed by the appearance of spots and lesions on the skin, weak gums and nose bleeds. The most common places for pirates to find scurvy spots would be on the legs and thighs. The latter stages of the disease saw pirates lose their teeth, suffer from jaundice and open wounds, then eventually death. But scurvy is a much more insidious disease. Like many diseases, scurvy was first described by then ancient Greek physician Hippocrates at about BCE.

The symptoms include depression, spots on the skin, especially the legs, exhaustion, sore gums, tooth loss, yellow skin, fever and eventually death. The full course of scurvy takes months, so the exact cause and effect were difficult to pin down. Also, vitamin C is available from many sources.

We think of it as coming from citrus fruit, including lemons, limes and oranges, but it is also abundant in green peppers, kale, spinach, and many other green vegetables. But such substances as whale skin, and liver can supply the necessary vitamins in places where no vegetable matter at all is available.

And to make the matter more confusing, Vitamin C is destroyed by cooking, or exposure to air, iron or copper. So a vitamin-rich substance, overcooked in an iron or copper pot and then left in the open air might lose nearly all of its life-giving properties.

Men on board ship, eating a diet that consisted mostly of preserved meat and bread, soon suffered from the results of scurvy. But the disease was also surprisingly common among city-dwellers, especially the poor. With no way to keep vegetables cold, or to quickly transport them, these foods often spoiled long before they could be transported to city markets.

The poor lived primarily on meat and bread, a very limiting diet that deprived them of many necessary vitamins. Surprisingly, the reason why city people did not often die of scurvy may have been beer — the heavy, black, bread-like beers common at the time carried some vitamin C. Also popular was a drink called bitters — essentially bitter herbs used to flavor beer.

Alcohol does not destroy the vitamin. Men got frostbite. These storms lasted for an inconceivable three months. The hospital pensioners and most of the young marines were dead. DM Feature Scurvy Centurion. The storms were a horrific challenge, but scurvy proved even more destructive than the gales.

As the number of men above deck dwindled, the scene below grew ever worse: sick men with open sores and rotting wounds swaying in tightly packed hammocks above a sloshing, rat-infested floor. Victims developed discolored spots all over their bodies, their legs swelled, and if they exerted themselves in even the tiniest degree—or were simply moved by someone else—they were apt to swoon and die immediately.

When they did, they often remained right where they were since the remaining crew was too weak to throw their bodies overboard. By that point the Centurion had only 70 men who were well enough to sail; the Gloucester and the Tryal had each lost more than half of their crews, mostly to scurvy.

Out of the 1, or so men who would have originally been on the three ships, only had survived. DM Scurvy symptoms. Mahon, a ship surgeon on the Barrosa , a British convict ship, ca.

Recovery took time. They also found a multitude of fish, including sea crayfish that Walter insisted weighed up to eight or nine pounds apiece. The men stayed on the island for three months. After nursing themselves back to health Anson and his men spent several months tooling around the South American coast, attacking Spanish towns and ships and managing, while close to land, to eat enough produce to keep scurvy at bay: there seemed to be a general acceptance among seafarers that fresh produce was helpful, though no one knew why.

Nonetheless, Anson somehow made it to Canton now Guangzhou, China. In a nearly unbelievable stroke of luck the gamble paid off. On June 20, , Anson captured a treasure galleon. Anson returned to England a rich and celebrated man and was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in But despite his power and title he never lost sight of the price of his success: of the 2, men who set out with Anson, only a few hundred had made it home alive.

In the French explorer Jacques Cartier reported that after his ships had become locked in ice in the St. Lawrence River, his men were saved from scurvy by a special tea prepared by local Native Americans from the bark and leaves of a particular tree. In the s and s several ship captains suggested there might be a connection between fruits and vegetables and scurvy.

Today we know why fresh veggies stave off scurvy. Despite the chemical differences among vitamins, they all play crucial roles in our metabolism, a term that while often used in reference to our pants size, actually refers to all the series of chemical reactions that occur in our cells.

Though we rarely are aware of these reactions, our lives depend on them. Walking down the street requires them. Reading a book requires them. So does forming scar tissue, developing a baby, or creating any type of new cell. Chemical reactions build and break down muscle, regulate body temperature, filter toxins, excrete waste, support our immune systems, and affect or indeed cause our moods.

They generate the energy we need to breathe and use the oxygen we inhale to pull energy from food. They allow us to feel and see and taste and touch and hear. Without these metabolic chemical reactions we would be as inert as stone. Our bodies get around this issue with the help of enzymes, large protein molecules that kick-start and speed up specific chemical reactions, often making them occur millions of times faster than they would on their own.

But our bodies sometimes need help making enzymes, and enzymes themselves sometimes need help doing their jobs. While enzymes speed up chemical reactions without being destroyed themselves, most vitamin-dependent reactions actually use up the vitamins.

It makes sense then that vitamin deficiencies cause problems because without adequate vitamins every enzymatic process that depends on those vitamins will come screeching to a stop. Collagen holds our tissues together; the word itself is derived from the Greek word for glue.

Without collagen our bodies would come apart from within—hence the hemorrhaging, broken bones, and loose teeth of scurvy. We make collagen from its precursor, procollagen, with the help of enzymes. Enzymes are made up, as are all proteins, of long chains of amino acids—chemical molecules known as the building blocks of protein—folded into three-dimensional shapes. Like keys that fit specific locks, enzymes are highly specific in what they react with, and this specificity is often indicated by their names: the suffix - ase means that a molecule is an enzyme, and the part before the - ase gives a hint as to what it does.

Lactase, for example, is the enzyme that allows us to break down lactose, the sugar in milk. Terms that end in - ose typically refer to sugars.

Often this denaturing is permanent, which is one of the reasons our bodies constantly need to create new enzymes and therefore need a regular supply of vitamins. Supposed triggers lacked even that medical grounding: according to author Frances Rachel Frankenburg they ranged from fatigue and depression to homesickness, contagion, seawater, damp air, copper pans, tobacco, hot climate, cold climate, rats, heredity, contagion, too much fresh fruit whoops , too much exercise, too little exercise, sea air, salted meat, poor morals, and filth.

But even if the concept of vitamins had been familiar, vitamin C would be a tough one to figure out.