Scurvy, we know today, has a single and simple cause: lack of vitamin C. But between the years 1500 and 1800, when an estimated two million sailors died from the disease, it seemed to defy all logic. Its symptoms were “a strange jumble,” as the Scottish physician Sir Gilbert Blane put it, that affected all the tissues and organs and culminated in a suffering beyond description. Victims were reduced to walking corpses, their ligaments cracking and bones turning black like those of the cursed sailors in scurvy’s great poetic evocation, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Many believed it must be several diseases manifesting at once; some theorized that it was the spirit of death itself.
Scurvy: The Disease of the Enlightenment - WSJ The Disease of the Enlightenment
Victims were reduced to walking corpses, their ligaments cracking and bones turning black. But the disease’s highly unusual symptoms also included intense cravings and unbearable nostalgia. Mike Jay reviews Jonathan Lamb’s book about this ‘disease of discovery’
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Explanation:
Scurvy, we know today, has a single and simple cause: lack of vitamin C. But between the years 1500 and 1800, when an estimated two million sailors died from the disease, it seemed to defy all logic. Its symptoms were “a strange jumble,” as the Scottish physician Sir Gilbert Blane put it, that affected all the tissues and organs and culminated in a suffering beyond description. Victims were reduced to walking corpses, their ligaments cracking and bones turning black like those of the cursed sailors in scurvy’s great poetic evocation, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Many believed it must be several diseases manifesting at once; some theorized that it was the spirit of death itself.
Answer:
Scurvy: The Disease of the Enlightenment - WSJ The Disease of the Enlightenment
Victims were reduced to walking corpses, their ligaments cracking and bones turning black. But the disease’s highly unusual symptoms also included intense cravings and unbearable nostalgia. Mike Jay reviews Jonathan Lamb’s book about this ‘disease of discovery’