A history of scurvy
At the end of the 15th century, Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese navigator, arrived in India around Africa and pioneered a new route. However, by the time Vasco da Gama and his crews were circling the southernmost Cape of Good Hope in Africa, more than 100 of the 160 sailors had already died of the disease. As such, the disease was terrifying for those who sailed long distances. But the disease was not just a sudden outbreak during the Age of Discovery. Neither the Neolithic people, the fearless Vikings, nor the Crusaders who went on expeditions through the Mediterranean Sea could avoid it. However, it was clear that the disease had been spotlighted since the Age of Great Navigation when navigation distances increased tremendously.
Even in the 18th century, the British Royal Navy lost more than 1,000 people only to scurvy during its four-year voyage. In 1747, the British Navy asked its military doctor, James Lind, to resolve the scurvy. James Lind conducted several experiments to effectively treat scurvy, directing scurvy patients to be fed fermented cider, diluted sulfate solution, vinegar, seawater, garlic, orange, and lemon. The soldier with oranges and lemons almost cured the disease, and the soldier who received fermented cider also slowly recovered.
As a result, it was concluded that citrus fruits were most effective against scurvy. The British Navy earned the nickname “Limeys” for a while because it sailed with a full load of limes on ships. British empire maintained many colonies on almost every continent in the world in the 19th century, thanks to such efforts to conquer the scurvy. Nevertheless, lime was a food that spoils so quickly. Improper storage makes lime treat scurvy not so well, and people begen to doubt the current theory of treatment. It wasn’t until the 20th century that the perfect cure for scurvy was revealed.

Cause of scurvy
The cause of scurvy is a lack of vitamin C, as you are well aware. Most mammals can produce vitamin C on their own, but humans do not, so they must be consumed on a diet. Vitamin C is an antioxidant that neutralizes free oxygen species, a by-product that occurs naturally in the body and protects cells. A lack of vitamin C can lead to various problems, such as rough skin, bleeding gums, and even tooth loss. If it persists further, death is also possible. This vitamin C deficiency was even more severe because sailors before the 19th century lived only with salted meat or biscuits due to limited storage methods.

Collagen and scurvy
Vitamin C plays a very important role in the formation of collagen. “Collagen” word’s “kolla-” means glue in Greek. Unlike common proteins, collagen has a fiber structure, such as ropes with three peptide chains entangled, which plays a huge role in maintaining tissue connections in the human body. Collagen twists three-stranded fibers together to form a triple-helix. An amino acid called proline is a device for maintaining the special ‘triple helix’. And one oxygen atom of the proline is connected to each other and tightly binds to form good collagen.
In biochemistry, attaching oxygen to the proline is very complicated, and enzymes that require vitamin C work in the process. In the absence of vitamin C, collagen is not adequately formed, weakening connective tissue. When the collagen texture becomes loose, blood vessels and gum tissue become weak, causing bleeding and tooth loss. Since the problem caused by abnormal collagen is not limited to the gums, severe scurvy afflicts every corner of the body.

Discovery of vitamin C
What made vitamin C so undiscovered? There is a record that the Chinese in the 5th century grew ginger on board and ate it when they sailed because they knew it was necessary to treat scurvy. The East India Company ordered a load of lemon juice on the fleet to set sail in 1601. The United States and Britain actually went to war again in the early 19th century, because the Royal Navy kidnapped and used Americans as sailors to fill up for the naval forces lost to scurvy. The horrors of scurvy continued for hundreds of years due to poor scientific analysis and treatment. In the meantime, belief in all kinds of pseudo-cures was developed, including bloodletting, mercury, sulfur, and even forced labor.
In the 20th century, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, a biochemist from Hungary, continued his research to discover vitamin C, the third alphabet since the discovery of vitamins A and B1 at the time. He extracted reductive substances from the adrenal cortex of cattle and published the findings in “Nature” in 1932. For this achievement, he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Furthermore, in 1933, Walter Norman Haworth of England discovered the vitamin C structure and renamed it “Ascorbic acid” to “resist scurvy,” after which humans entered the path of mass production of vitamin C and finally conquered scurvy.

How to consume vitamin C
Despite the urgent need for vitamin C to be discovered, it was delayed because of its weak structural components. Vitamin C is susceptible to heat and is water soluble, making it easily soluble in water. As a result, the ingredients are destroyed if boiled for a long time, so the sailors who boiled citrus and stored it as juice did not see the effect of preventing scurvy. Additionally, the destruction of vitamin C was accelerated further by the sailors at the time, who kept the juices in metal jars such as copper or iron.
Fortunately, we can consume these vitamin C-rich vegetables and fruits in the same way as salads. You don’t have to worry about scurvy because you can get enough vitamin C through a standard diet and easily get much higher nutritional supplements than you would normally need a day at pharmacies. Recently, there have been many questions about the high content of vitamin C, and I will let you know in the next video.

References
1. Major R.H. A history of medicine.in: Springfield, Illinois1954: 51
2. Emmanuil Magiorkinis, Apostolos Beloukas, Aristidis Diamantis. Scurvy: Past, present and future. European Journal of Internal Medicine Volume 22, Issue 2, April 2011, Pages 147-152.
3. Kenneth J. Carpenter. The History of Scurvy and Vitamin C
4. Nourishable, A Brief History of Vitamin C | Function and Cooking
5. Ewa Karna, Lukasz Szoka, Thi Yen Ly Huynh, and Jerzy A. Proline-dependent regulation of collagen metabolism. Cell Mol Life Sci. 2020 May; 77(10): 1911–1918.