One of Tiesler's co-authors, her husband and colleague Andrea Cucina, is a National Geographic Society grantee, on a separate but related project. Tuberculosis, syphilis, and other diseases that historians believe struck La Isabela would leave their mark on skeletal remains.
Tiesler and colleagues examined 27 of the skeletons, all but one belonging to men. At least 20 bore signs—striations carved in the outer lining of bones—of what the study called "severe scurvy.
The study "shows convincingly that the crew members of Columbus who were buried at La Isabela had suffered, but also had healed, from scurvy before they died," says scurvy expert George J.
Scurvy remained the scourge of seafarers until the 18th century. British sailors famously were nicknamed "limeys" for the lime juice they drank as a preventive for the severe vitamin C deficiency, which produces symptoms including lethargy, anemia, and, in severe cases, the re-opening of old wounds. The ailment typically appears after one to three months of complete vitamin deficiency. The study suggests that the colonists, weakened by a two-month voyage and the one-month wait at sea that preceded it, probably already suffered from scurvy when they arrived in In the New World, however, the colonists would have been surrounded by fresh fruits and vegetables rich in vitamin C.
So how did they end up with severe scurvy? Fruits such as guava and wild cherries, and the native staples of cassava yucca and sweet potato, all contain enough vitamin C to forestall scurvy. The finding might explain why Columbus implored the Spanish crown to send more shipments of food to the early colonists.
But none of the foodstuffs requested were rich in vitamin C, and ultimately the colonists faced rationing. The organization of La Isabela, the tools, and its pottery all point to Spanish colonists pursuing a European lifestyle there. Later weakened by European epidemics, the native Taino people of the island probably couldn't have helped the colonists, she adds, even if they had wanted to. Tiesler acknowledges that her initial report of the scurvy findings, at a bioarchaeology meeting, met with strong skepticism from some archaeologists, who did not see evidence of scurvy in the colonists' own accounts from the time.
Some of the bones do show some signs of healing, likely as a result of the colonists eating limited amounts of some foods containing vitamin C, says Maat. Some vitamin C must have been present in the diets of some of the dead, she says, because they had been healed of scurvy when other diseases killed them. All rights reserved. Bones Speak Tuberculosis, syphilis, and other diseases that historians believe struck La Isabela would leave their mark on skeletal remains.
Taking a dozen men stricken with scurvy, Lind divided them into six groups of two and administered specific dietetic supplements to each group. The two lucky sailors who were fed lemon and oranges for six days recovered, and one was even declared fit for duty before the Salisbury reached port.
Writing about his experiment in A Treatise of the Scurvy , Lind described the remarkable improvement in the two men:. The consequence was, that the most sudden and visible good effects were perceived from the use of the oranges and lemons; one of those who had taken them being at the end of six days fit for duty. The spots were not at the same time quite off his body, nor his gums sound, but without any other medicine he became quite healthy before we came into Plymouth.
The other was the best recovered of any in his condition, and being deemed pretty well, was appointed nurse to the rest of the sick.
Although the Salisbury experiment is still widely regarded as the pivotal moment in the conquest of scurvy, Capt. William Bowles wrote in his poem The Spirit of Discovery :. Smile, glowing Health! For now no more the wasted seaman sinks, With haggard eye and feeble frame diseased; No more with tortured longings for the sight Of fields and hillocks green, madly he calls. Cook was in no doubt that the principal cause of the health of his crews was owing to regular doses of malt Recently Christopher Lawrence has called Cook's regimen 'a representation and an endorsement of 18th-century social order'.
For his own part, Cook was in no doubt that the principal cause of the health of his crews was owing to regular doses of malt, and woe betide the sailor who refused it! In a paper delivered to the Royal Society he said of malt, 'This is without doubt one of the best antiscorbutic [effective against scurvy] sea-medicines yet found out; and if given in time will, with proper attention to other things, I am persuaded, prevent the scurvy from making any great progress for a considerable time'.
There were dissenting voices about this at the time, as there still are today. Gilbert Blane and Thomas Beddoes, highly esteemed authorities on scurvy in the 18th century, rightly doubted that there was any antiscorbutic virtue in malt. Thomas Trotter, another expert, thought sauerkraut and portable soup were 'mere placebo'. They stated what Lind had already experimentally deduced - that fresh vegetables and citrus juice are the only substantial sources of vitamin C.
But although 'rob' was carried on board Cook's ships, it had been boiled to reduce it, and in the process all its vitamin C ascorbic acid had been lost. It turns out that Cook's prohibition against the fat from the boiling pans was the only truly antiscorbutic measure he took, for hot salt fat coming into contact with copper acquired a substance that irritates the gut and prevents its absorption of vitamins.
James Watt has pointed this out in several articles, together with the plausible conjecture that an infestation of worms caused a similar effect in Cook's own body, precipitating a deficiency of vitamin B that might have been responsible for his odd behaviour in Hawaii shortly before his death. There is no doubt that many people suffered from scurvy on Cook's ships. On the second voyage William Wales, the astronomer, and Johann Reinhold Forster, the naturalist, both give descriptions of their symptoms, chiefly their growing melancholy and sense of isolation.
On the first, Joseph Banks records that once the Endeavour was in the Arafura Sea everyone - except Cook, Solander and himself - were suffering from homesickness, 'the longing for home which the Physicians When they landed at Savu, Banks reported that there were many people sick on board. The deaths at Batavia of Tupaia, the priest from the island of Raiatea, and Charles Green, the astronomer, have usually been ascribed to the dysentery that killed 30 of the Endeavour 's crew at the end of the voyage.
Beaglehole suggests, however, that it was not dysentery that put an end to Tupaia's life and Cook himself was adamant that his death was owing to 'the long want of a vegetable diet which he had all his life before been used to, and brought upon him all the disorders attending a sea life. Cook was referring to the fact that Tupaia refused malt, portable soup and all the other remedies against scurvy, and that Green's addiction to drink was precipitating scorbutic symptoms. However, Tupaia, Green and a crew member named Hicks had been diagnosed at Batavia as the three people suffering from complaints 'occasioned by long continuance at sea', which makes it look as if perhaps Cook's record is not as clean in this respect as has sometimes been thought, and he did lose two of his men to scurvy.
When James Morrison reported that scurvy appeared on the Bounty on the run between the Cape of Good Hope and Tahiti, Captain Bligh wrote in the margin of his manuscript 'Captain Bligh never had a symptom of Scurvy in any ship he commanded', and Vancouver was dismayed when he found it on his vessel, Discovery , while he was mapping the north east coastline of America: 'To my utter astonishment and surprise, I was given to understand from Mr Menzies that the sea scurvy had made its appearance amongst some of the crew.
In naval logs of the later 18th century, scurvy is scarcely mentioned, fluxes and cholera being far the most common complaints. But Leonard Gillespie, a naval surgeon, had it reported to him that scurvy was still common on the India station, and that in HMS Egmont lost a third of her crew to the disease, on a return journey from Jamaica.
Thus it has always been hard to say anything authoritative about scurvy, or to trust the testimony of its victims, who are afflicted by emotions so powerful that they lose the virtue of dispassionate neutrality that has been understood to distinguish the minds of explorers and navigators during the Enlightenment. Hence William Wales's terse yet strangely querulous entry in his Resolution journal: 'Brewed Wort [malt] for some of the People who began to have symptoms of the Scurvy.
I suppose I shall be believed when I say that I am unhappy in being one of them'.
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