Tea at Trianon: Scurvy

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Scurvy

From Geri Walton:

Between 1500 and 1800 some two million sailors died from the “scourge of sailors.” Scurvy seemed to be a medical mystery until a British naval physician, named James Lind, learned another British surgeon had given crewmen cider and their ailments miraculously disappeared. Lind decided to set up a trial in 1747 to test the efficacy of antiscorbutics. At the time, Lind and others believed beer was the best antiscorbutic. However, because it was difficult to carry on ships, Lind resorted to giving his crewmen either citrus fruit, cider, or other substances.

Lind’s trial proved citrus fruits could prevent ill-health and cure the disease, but Lind died before his findings were widely adopted. By the end of the eighteenth century, Britain’s Royal Navy, based largely on recommendations of the physician Sir Gilbert Blane, began rationing each crewman three-quarters of an ounce of either lemon or lime juice a day, which is how the term “limey” originated. Citrus juice rationing removed the threat of scurvy among British sailors. However, scurvy remained a scourge for others throughout the world.

The harmful effects of a lack of vitamin C became more noticeable by the mid 1800s. For instance, when the Irish potato famine of 1840 struck, scurvy was epidemic in Ireland and Scotland because the people were no longer eating potatoes rich in Vitamin C. Several years later, scurvy was an issue during the American Civil War for imprisoned soldiers on both sides, and, in the 1870s, during the Franco-Prussian war, participants of the Siege of Paris also suffered from scurvy. (Read more.)