Posted on 10/01/2013 9:24:28 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine
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In reality, Smeerenburg was usually abandoned at the end of each season, though by the 1630s, years of vicious competition led Dutch whalers to try something novel: leave a crew of volunteers to overwinter at Smeerenburg, both to be on hand to protect more expensive equipment that could be left behind, and in order to get the whaling station up and running as soon as possible the following spring. And so in 1632 seven men were left in Smeerenburg to wait out the winter.
It did not go well. The Dutch volunteers quickly succumbed to the “polar night disease,” as it was sometimes known—scurvy. As related by Kenneth C. Carpenter, in his A History of Scurvy and Vitamin C, “They were left on September 11, and already by November 24, ‘the scurvy began to appear among them; they searched very earnestly for green herbs, bears and foxes, but could find none,’ nor did they have any success later. Several of them took ‘potions against scurvy,’ but three of them died in mid-January, and the rest were too weak even to try to hunt for fresh meat. All were dead by the end of February.”
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. In 1602, a Father Antonio de la Ascension chronicled with particularly gruesome detail the onset of the disease in his party while in California:
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The backstory behind this gruesome means of death lies in the body’s inability to produce collagen. Vitamin C is necessary for the hydroxylation of proline and lysine, and without these collagen can no longer form. Collagen, in turn, is necessary to keep your body together, and as scurvy advances joint pain and swelling accompany wounds that do not heal or even re-open and begin to bleed again. (Trapped in the Arctic in 1832, explorer John Ross began to bleed from wounds he’d received decades earlier in the Napoleonic Wars.) Your teeth come loose from your gums, because your body literally can no longer hold itself together.
Well after De la Ascension’s voyage, scurvy continued to be little-understood—in his case, symptoms abated once the missionaries gave up and sailed for home, and while it was cactus they acquired from indigenous Mexicans that probably saved them, De la Ascension came to believe there was something poisonous in California’s air itself. Known also as mal de terre—“land disease”—all manner of hypotheses for its cause were floated. Pyrard, who thought it contagious, blamed “great length of voyage, want of cleanliness, sea air, the corruption of water and victuals,” to name a few (though to his credit he did recognize citrus fruits as an easy cure-all). Other opinions blamed excessive amounts of salted meat and fish, “which heat the blood and corrupt the internal parts.” In 1593, Sir Richard Hawkins suggested as possible cures burning tar on the deck of the ship or sprinkling it with vinegar, and to keep the crew occupied with some “bodily exercise of work, of agility, of pastimes, of dancing, of use of arms.” Hawkins, too, understood that citrus helped abate scurvy, but went on to plead for a better understanding of the disease: “I wish that some learned man would write of it, for it is the plague of the sea, and the spoil of mariners.” (more at the link.)
Scurvy is a particularly horrible way to die, as lack of vitamin C prevents the body from producing sufficient collagen. The symptoms include pain, bleeding, and the inability to move correctly as the body falls apart at the seams. Couple these awful symptoms with the fact that no one knew why it happened, and many societies did not know how to cure it, until James Lind experimented with folk remedies in 1747, including citrus fruits. Even that did not help much, as it took decades for authorities to implement Lind's recommendations.
I don’t know who is in charge of the Prepper’s Ping List but be sure to let them know.
An outstanding tea when you have the cold or flu is to mix rose hips, chamomile, and honey. The tea beats back a cold in just about two days.
Ping!
Thanks for that explanation...I never knew what a rose hip was.
Kartographer’s your guy.
Aren’t pine needles supposed to have antiscorbutic properties also?
Broccoli and bell/sweet, red or green peppers are high in C.
Antiscorbutic substances derived from coniferous trees
http://cdm15290.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15290coll6/id/999/rec/6
You can make pine needle tea that has that property.
Rose hip
The rose hip, also known as rose haw or rose hep, is the fruit of the rose plant, that typically is red-to-orange, but ranges from dark purple to black in some species. WikipediaNutrition Facts
Rose hipsAmount Per 100 grams
Calories 162
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 0.3 g 0%
Sodium 4 mg 0%
Potassium 429 mg 12%
Total Carbohydrate 38 g 12%
Dietary fiber 24 g 96%
Sugar 2.6 g
Protein 1.6 g 3%
Vitamin A 86% Vitamin C 710%
Calcium 16% Iron 6%
Vitamin B-6 5% Magnesium 17%
*Per cent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.
Sources include: USDA
Good to know (about Rose Hips tea, etc.). Thanks ;)
But if you have a SHTF scenario happen in the fall to winter you’ve got to have some bottled vitamin C to get you by until the first crop of rose hips is ripe enough to harvest.
They also remind me of the whole hemlock thing with Socrates.
I also grow and dry lingonberries, apricots, and can plums, apples, as well as pickle cauliflower, carrots, onions, green beans, boiled eggs, kolrhabi, okra, and just about anything that grows. My favorite is boiled eggs with beets, cloves, cinnamon sticks, hot peppers, a little brown sugar, and sliced onions.
Actually rose hips stay on the bush all winter long. That is until the birds hit on them in about february. No need to feel rushed to harvest them.
Two things. First, how much vitamin C you need depends strongly on what you eat. Requirements when eating a high-carb diet are much higher than when eating a diet higher in healthy fats. Second, sprouted grains have 3x the vitamin C content of unsprouted grains.
My neighbors rose bushes sure are looking more delicious all the time!
I really think our founding fathers discovered the desire to govern while engaged in competetive beer brewing and consumption. Oh, to be a fly on the wall at the time would be one of my biggest wishes if god grants them post facto.
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