Limeys

The disease was characterised by rotting gums, foetid breath, swelling limbs, malaise and haemorrhaging.

Scurvy also crashed the immune system, making it easier for other diseases to take hold.

Limeys is the dramatic history of Dr James Lind’s superhuman efforts to find a cure for scurvy in the face of prejudice and antipathy. A Scottish surgeon who sailed with the Royal Navy, Lind in 1747 became the first to prove the efficacy of citrus fruit juice in combatting the disease.

Yet he was unable to penetrate the high-minded disregard of those in authority or to persuade them to enforce the universal consumption of fruit. His findings were finally accepted in 1795, after Lind’s death, and scurvy was virtually eliminated.

However, political and commercial manipulation in the 1850s saw Mediterranean lemons replaced by limes grown on English estates in the West Indies. Unknown at the time, limes have only one quarter of the vitamin C found in lemons and out of the resulting disaster for British seamen the term “Limeys” was born.

Limeys
By David I. Harvie
Published by Sutton Publishing
ISBN 0 7509 2772 0
Hardback, 314 pages,
Price £14.99