The battle over scurvy crucial for British control of the seas and world

Lonnie Yeager
    Scurvy was a plague that hit mariners for hundreds of years often killing many seaman back in the day. The sailors teeth would rot away and their gums  inflame where they couldn't swallow often slowly rotting away a living corpse. The ignorance and indifference of the royal medical unit of the British navy is particularly to blame for this wanton destruction of human life may of who were pressed into service in her majesty's navy by force. Author Stephan Bown brings the story of scurvy with a book called "Scurvy" and painstakingly reexamines this medical plague that usually hit mariners eating bad salted foods for months away in the sea. The mystery surrounding this debilitating disease was really unknown to most but the most acute observer of this period who noticed the sailors rarely ate green fresh foods in their diet. The book pretty much points out that the English cure of this dreaded disease was the principle factor in winning control of the seas as a healthier crew often would determine the course of crucial coastal control. Bown goes through the voyages of James Cook and how he was one of the first sea captains who demanded fresher foods for his crew and ended the disposable outlook of crewman and the lack of expenditure by these corporations backing these sea adventure and trade. The reduction in death rates did much to improve efficiency and morale on the ships making these wooden machines even more precise of a weapon for kingdoms on the move of expansion in this era. Bown is an expert of old school sea mercantilism and has written many kick ass books of this subject. He culminates the battle over scurvy with the important British victory over Napoleon at the battle of Trafalgar and the overwhelming victory over the Spanish and French navy by a healthy  British crew, whose mastery of the seas developed a necessity of  scientific research into scurvy. As Bown illustrates it took Gilbert Blane to pretty much print about the causes of scurvy and why it was so brutal of a disease for over-worked shipmen with bad diets.  Scurvy was a disease that was easily curable and one wonders why it took so long for the obvious to be explored as so many men were so needlessly liquidated for centuries.  A conspiracy advocate would conclude that this was a deliberatel plan to empty out man power and potential population of discontent in the respective European kingdoms after centuries of peasant revolts.