Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of SailScurvy took a terrible toll in the Age of Sail, killing more sailors than were lost in all sea battles combined. The threat of the disease kept ships close to home and doomed those vessels that ventured too far from port. The willful ignorance of the royal medical elite, who endorsed ludicrous medical theories based on speculative research while ignoring the life-saving properties of citrus fruit, cost tens of thousands of lives and altered the course of many battles at sea. The cure for scurvy ranks among the greatest of human accomplishments, yet its impact on history has, until now, been largely ignored. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - asukamaxwell - LibraryThing"Scurvy" is gruesomely informative but a fantastic read! Ascorbic acid or Vitamin C, is like glue for tissues and without it the body quite literally fall apart. It is horrifying. Teeth and nails fall ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - richardderus - LibraryThingDNF @ 18% I'm callin' it. No more. I KNOW THAT ASCORBIC ACID IS THE ANSWER IT'S THE 21ST GODDAMNED CENTURY so tell me how people who *couldn't* have known it was ascorbic acid firgured it out without ... Read full review
Other editions - View all
Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest ... Stephen R. Bown Limited preview - 2005 |
Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest ... Stephen R. Bown Limited preview - 2004 |