Putrid gums and 'dead men's cloaths'.

By the mid-18th century the ability to fix positions at sea allowed ships routinely to make long voyages out of sight of land. From consequent lack of fresh vegetables and fruit the sailors commonly developed scurvy, and from being solely an affliction of explorers the condition took on military, colonial and economic dimensions. Attempts to deal with it were hampered by confusion between different disorders and by the lack of a scientific approach. Before James Lind’s Treatise of 17531, those who wrote about scurvy had seldom seen it for themselves, and ‘no physician conversant with this disease at sea had undertaken to throw light upon the subject’. Lind (1716–1794) was not the first to treat scurvy with citrus fruit, but his fame endures because of his contribution to scientific medicine in using a comparative experimental design. His study took place ‘on board the Salisbury at sea’ between 20 May and 17 June 1747. The British Royal Navy did not adopt citrus rations until 1795. Lind’s experiment is only briefly described in his Treatise, and the lack of detail has led to contradictory secondary accounts (e.g. of where the ship was going). I have therefore located and studied the ship’s original papers, in particular the captain’s log book and muster roll. Held in the Public Record Office in Kew, Surrey, England (archived as ADM 51/936 and ADM 36/3298), these describe the ship’s voyages, crew, provisions, engagements with the enemy and eventual fate. As far as I am aware these records have not previously been studied with regard to Lind’s work. For the purposes of this paper, I have amended the dates recorded in the documents. Britain remained on the Julian calendar until 1752, so in 1746 dates between 1 January and 25 March were written as in ‘1745/6’. For clarity the years are rendered here into the current Gregorian style.