Diseases Info

Scurvy

Overview | Outbreak | Prevention

Overview

Alternative names

vitamin C deficiency; deficiency - vitamin C; scorbutus

Definition

A condition characterized by general weakness, anemia, gumdisease (gingivitis), and skin hemorrhages resulting from a lack of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) in the diet. Scurvy is now most frequently seen in in older,malnourished adults.

Scurvy in the past

Scurvy was a serious problem in the past, when fresh fruitsand vegetables were not available during the winter in many parts of the world.It was especially common among sailors in the days when only nonperishable foods could be stocked aboard ship. More than half the crew of Vasco da Gama died fromscurvy on his first trip (1497-99) around the Cape of Good Hope. In 1747 the Scottish naval surgeon James Lind treated scurvy-ridden sailors with lemons and oranges and obtained dramatic cures. In 1795 the British navy began to distribute regular rations of lime juice during long sea voyages (hence the name limeys for British sailors), a measure that was largely successful in preventing scurvy. It was probably the first disease to be definitely associated with a dietary deficiency.

Outbreak

Baudin, Nicholas

Baudin, Nicholas (1754-1803), French naval officer who mapped the island of Van Diemen’s Land (present-day Tasmania, Australia), and explored the western, northern, and southern coastlines of the Australian mainland. Baudin was born near the French port of La Rochelle. In the 1790s he commanded voyages to East Asia, the Caribbean, and South America togather scientific information. Having received a commission from Napoleon I, Baudin sailed in 1800 to explore the Australian continent and the large island of Van Diemen’s Land. The French government hoped Baudin’s explorations would expand scientific knowledge and establish a French claim to Van Diemen’s Land and the continent’s unexplored southern coast.

In command of two ships, Baudin sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, Africa, and eastward across the Indian Ocean. By the time he reached Cape Leeuwin, Australia’s southern most point, his crew was suffering so severely from scurvy (a disease caused by lack of vitamin C) that instead of continuing to Van Diemen’s Land, he sailed northward for Timor, in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia). On his way, he discovered a site on the western Australian coast he named Geographe Bay, after one of his ships,and he explored Shark Bay as well as other parts of the western coast that Europeans had not visited in more than a century.

From Timor, Baudin continued his clockwise voyage around Australia, sailing east and south to Van Diemen’s Land. He charted its coastline, and scientific teams went ashore to study the native Aborigines and collect natural history specimens. Baudins’ coastal explorations resulted in the first accurate mapping of Van Diemen’s Land.

From there he explored Australia’s southern coast, where, at a point now known as Encounter Bay, he met up with British navigator Matthew Flinders. Flinders had just finished mapping the southern coast and gave Baudin copies of his maps. Baudin went on to take a closer look at Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria, then left on the homeward voyage back to France. At a stopover on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, then a French possession, Baudin died of an illness.

Flinders also stopped at Mauritius on his way back to England, but the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815) had resumed between Britain and France and he was detained there by the French from 1803 to 1810. Baudin’s ships returned to France in 1804 with Flinders’s geographic data,and the French government misrepresented these discoveries as Baudin’s.

First Antarctic Expeditions

In 1901 Shackleton joined the British National Antarctic Expedition led by British naval officer Robert Falcon Scott,sailing on the ship Discovery. The goal of the expedition was to reach the South Pole from a base on Ross Island in the Ross Sea. Despite inadequate rations and little knowledge of sled dog driving, Scott, Shackleton, and British zoologist Edward Wilson reached latitude 82°17’ south on December 30, 1902, the farthest south anyone had reached at that time. Their trek home was a race against starvation, with Shackleton also suffering from scurvy. Upon their return to base, Scott sent the ailing Shackleton home on a relief ship.

Shackleton made another attempt to reach the South Pole between 1907 and 1909 as the leader of the British Antarctic Expedition. After sailing on the Nimrod to a base on Ross Island, Shackleton and three companions pioneered a route up through the Transantarctic Mountains to the polar plateau by way of the Beardmore Glacier. By January 9, 1909, they had trekked to latitude 88°23' south, within 179 km (111 mi) of the South Pole, but dwindling food supplies forced them to turn back. Shackleton later told his wife, Emily,“I thought you'd rather have a live donkey than a dead lion.” Shackleton was knighted in 1909 by British monarch Edward VII for setting the record for the farthest southern latitude reached.

Prevention

• Ascorbic Acid
  • Ascorbic Acid or Vitamin C, a food substance needed by humans to prevent scurvy, a disease of the gums, bones, and blood vessels, and to increase the body’s resistance to infection. Ascorbic acid acts as an antioxidant, a nutrient that chemically binds and neutralizes the tissue-damaging effects of substances in the environment known as free radicals. As a result, ascorbic acid is vital for the growth and maintenance of healthy bones, teeth, gums, ligaments, and blood vessels. Because of its role in the formation of collagen, the body’s major building protein, ascorbic acid is a central component of all body organs.
  • Ascorbic acid occurs naturally in many fruits and vegetables, particularly in tomatoes, citrus fruits, cantaloupe, broccoli, spinach, green peppers, cabbage, and potatoes. The vitamin is easily destroyed by cooking or canning foods and by exposure to air and light. A healthy diet generally contains sufficient quantities of ascorbic acid, but the body requires more of the vitamin after serious injury, major surgery, burns, and when exposed to extremes of temperature. At risk for ascorbic acid deficiency are smokers, women taking contraceptives containing the female sex hormone estrogen, and people who live in cities with high levels of carbon monoxide from traffic. There is conflicting evidence that taking large doses of ascorbic acid will either prevent the common cold or reduce the severity of its symptoms.
  • Ascorbic acid is an organic compound of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Pure ascorbic acid is a white solid, and is made synthetically from the sugar dextrose. It is used both in vitamin supplements and as a food preservative.
• Fruits are essential in the diet to prevent certain diseases. Scurvy, a potentially fatal disease marked by swollen joints, inflamed gums, and weakness, results from lack of vitamin C, the vitamin found inparticularly high concentrations in oranges, lemons, and limes. Unprocessed grains and legumes, along with other foods, supply thiamine, or vitamin B1, which prevents beriberi, a potentially fatal disease of the nervous system. Many fruits are also rich in vitamin A, which prevents night blindness, supports the immune system, helps bones grow, keeps skin healthy, and plays many other indispensable roles in maintaining health.
• Lime (fruit), common name for a tree, and for its fruit. Limes are native to Southeast Asia and are cultivated chiefly in tropical regions. The trees are seldom more than 4.6 m (more than 15 ft) high and grow irregularly, forming crooked trunks. The white flowers are similar to flowers of oranges. The small fruit ranges in shape from oval to spherical, with a thin yellow-green rind, or exocarp; a thin white mesocarp; and apulpy, acid, juicy, yellow-green flesh, or endocarp. The juice contains small quantities of vitamin C, but lime juice was used to prevent scurvy long before the word vitamin was coined and before it was known that lemons contain larger quantities of vitamin C. The nickname Limey was applied to the English sailors who were routinely supplied with limes to prevent scurvy. Limes are not extensively cultivated in the United States; most limes marketed in the United States are grown in Mexico. Many successful hybrids of lime and lemon, such as the Perrine lemon, are produced in the lemon-growing areas of the United States. Commercial limes are grown for juice.
• Sauerkraut
• Kerguelen cabbage

• scurvy corkscrew hairs
• scurvy, corkscrew hair
• scurvy, gingival hemorrhage
• scurvy, periungual hemorrhage