in his Short History of Nautical Medicine, to which I am indebted for many of these historical facts, tells the story of a Portuguese sailor serving on one of the ships in the East Indies trade who "came to 'request mast' and asked that an onion be added to the bread, oil, cheese, and wine that formed their main ration." The captain roared out at him to demand if he expected luxuries at sea. Yet just that additional onion a day would have saved lives from scurvy.
The disease seems to have been less prevalent on the Dutch merchantmen and naval vessels than on those of other Northern navies. This may be due to the fact that Dutch ships usually carried a hogshead of sauerkraut which was served to the mess.
As Captain Roddis points out, "Many wars and campaigns have been decided more by disease than by arms." Medical writers of the early nineteenth century agree that England's blockade of France, which ultimately annihilated Napoleon's sea power, would have been impossible if scurvy had not been previously eliminated from the British Navy.
Yellow fever and malaria destroyed the power of Drake's fleet off South America and left the Dons in power.
What cost France the loss of her empire in the Caribbean was not the strength of the Haitian rebels, but the "yellow jack," which routed Rochambeau's army.
One of the greatest names in the history of naval medicine is that of James Lind, who served as surgeon on board H.M.S. Salisbury in 1747. Lind experimented with twelve cases of scurvy aboard that ship, until he proved conclusively that the disease could be cured, and very rapidly, simply by adding lemon juice to the daily ration. In six days two sailors who had been given a lemon and two oranges daily during the experiment were so far recovered of the disease that one man went back to duty and the other was retained to nurse the remaining ten who had been kept without the ration of vitamin C. Dr. Lind's cure for scurvy was adopted by ships' surgeons in the British and other navies. But it
