[Sca-cooks] Lemons in Middle English

[Terry Decker]

What you will probably find is the body counts of the men who died from 
scurvy.  The first European use of citrus fruit against scurvy that I know 
of is the voyage of James Lancaster of the East India Company (1601-02). 
Lancaster dosed his men with lemon juice at Cape Good Hope, then laid in 
stores of lemons and oranges at Madagascar, so that he arrived in India 
without having lost a man to scurvy.

There is an account in 1734 of a marrooned seaman curing scurvy by eating 
scurvy grass (Cochleria officinalis), which led to naval surgeon James 
Lind's experiments with scurvy victims in 1747.  Lind's "Treatise on the 
Scurvy" containing the citrus cure was published in 1753.  His theories were 
tested by a British fleet in 1794 and rations of lime juice were ordered on 
all long voyages in 1795.  The order was reissued in 1884 after another 
outbreak of scurvy.

BTW, James Cook's used sauerkraut to combat scurvy on a voyage of just over 
3 years in the South Seas having only one man succumb to scurvy.  Upon his 
return in 1775, he was awarded the Copely Medal of the Royal Society for 
defeating scurvy.

Bear


> You may want to try  His Royal Majesties Navy (Pick a Monarch) medical 
> records. As limes and lemons were thought of as one of the remedies for 
> scurvy. Which would tend to lend to their usage in military cooking often 
> ahead of civilian cooking in new ideas. Of course that would tend to show 
> up after the English began long voyages.
> Da