We tend to think now of scurvy as mainly a punch line, if anything—“scurvy-ridden rats” is the kind of popular pirate epithet that appears in even the most G-rated family fare. Partly this is because now, fully understanding its mechanism, it seems a particularly ridiculous problem. But ask anyone whose suffered from it: it is a singularly horrid and terrible way to die.
Read the rest at Lapham's Quarterly.
[HT: Arts & Letters Daily]
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