Jonathan Lamb (2)

This one allowed me to gain a new perspective on malnutrition at sea and certain side effects that can only come with scurvy. I already knew that ascorbic acid synthesizes collagen and without it we literally fall apart at the seams. But it can also cause dramatic emotional fluctuations, amnesia and extreme sensory overload. Many 18th c. scientific observations and personal accounts at sea, taken at face value, were actually written through the lens of scurvy.

Lamb also covers the fruitless show more attempts to pinpoint the prevention of scurvy and how it can easily mask as other diseases. All those symptoms also led to an intense, deadly homesickness known as "Scorbutic nostalgia." So much so, it was studied extensively alongside what's known as calenture, a delusion that causes sailors to throw themselves into the sea. Finally, the chapters on scurvy culture in Australia had me thinking about land-scurvy. Convicts certainly weren't provided fresh fruit consistently and apparently provisions varied wildly. It would be interesting to compare this with early American pioneers who traveled for months on end with a similar diet.

However, Lamb assumes a lot of their reader from the beginning. Thank goodness I've read a lot of medical history and the 18th century is my specialty. Surnames are dropped without context, which results in limited accessibility outside of academia. Also, it's a shame Lamb didn't utilize more non-English accounts of scurvy. I would've liked to see more 18th c. French or Dutch sources, considering the abundance of their literature. Lamb often refers to the Odyssey, Lucretius, and Moby Dick, so it definitely wasn't a cultural limitation. show less

A book that could be split into two, depending on taste:

The parts that most closely related to the history of scurvy, its effects and consequences on history, were highly interesting and from which I have learnt a lot. For these parts I'd give it 5 stars.

The other parts that are quite philosophical, looking at how scurvy influenced fiction, or the author's philosophical opinions of how scurvy paralleled other struggles and stories, were a bit too heavy for me.

Book received from NetGalley.

I enjoyed this book, though I did have a few issues with it. Parts of it seemed to switch gears from the main point of the book which is scurvy, how doctors figured out what caused it, and how it was prevented without refrigeration and other modern preservation methods. The other was the use of quite a bit of medical jargon that I had to look up. I believe that this book is supposed to be for the general public, but that didn't always seem to be the case. All show more that being said I did enjoy learning about the discovery that the disease wasn't contagious, how they figured out how to cure it and how the sailors at that time dealt with the disease. It was also interesting reading about some historical incidences could have been influenced by captains and crew having acute reactions to scurvy. I think it's a good read just have a good medical website to explain terms just in case. show less