[Sca-cooks] Lemons in Middle English

[Micheal]

 I had thought it was earlier then that oh well facts Bear out I guess
 Da

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2005 4:53 PM
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Lemons in Middle English


> 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
>
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