A Treatise of the Scurvy
period treatise · 1753
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SUMMARY
Lind's 1753 *Treatise of the Scurvy* contains, in Part II Chapter IV, the report of the 12-sailor comparative trial conducted aboard HMS Salisbury in May 1747. Lind tested six pairs of scorbutic sailors on six different supplements (cider, sulphuric acid drops, vinegar, sea water, an electuary of garlic and other ingredients, and two oranges and one lemon daily) while holding diet otherwise constant. The two sailors on citrus recovered fitness for duty within six days; the other groups showed no improvement. The trial is widely cited as the first controlled clinical trial in the modern Anglophone medical literature. The treatise's later argument (that scurvy is caused by 'putrefactive' processes correctable by acid foods) is partially correct in mechanism; the practical implication (issue lemon juice to sailors) was correct and was demonstrated by 1747. The Royal Navy did not adopt routine citrus issue until 1795, 42 years after the treatise's publication, and routine commercial-marine citrus issue did not follow until 1867. Wootton (2006, ch. 7) treats Lind 1753 as the prototype case of good experimental knowledge ignored for institutional and cultural reasons.
NOTES
James Lind (1716 to 1794) served as a surgeon’s mate and surgeon in the Royal Navy from 1739, conducted the HMS Salisbury trial in 1747, and after publication of the Treatise in 1753 was appointed Chief Physician of the Royal Naval Hospital at Haslar (Portsmouth) in 1758. He served at Haslar until 1783. The 1753 treatise was reprinted in 1757 and 1772, was translated into French and Italian within Lind’s lifetime, and was widely cited within the medical literature; the 42-year delay between publication and institutional adoption is documented by the Royal Navy’s own administrative records and is the standard case in the historiography of the gap between experimental knowledge and institutional change. The text is available through Internet Archive in the original 1753 edition and through reprint editions edited by Christopher Lloyd (Navy Records Society, 1965, The Health of Seamen).