South by National Maritime Museum

Author:National Maritime Museum
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781844864836
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2018-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

One day’s rations for one person on the Terra Nova expedition. The rations were divided into standard or summit rations, the latter reflecting the greater demands of the polar plateau. Photograph by Herbert Ponting, January 1912.

On 18 August 1911, while Scott’s team continued to make preparations at Cape Evans, Dr Edward Atkinson, its naval surgeon, gave a lecture to the men that summarised what Scott believed at the time: ‘Atkinson lectured on “Scurvy” last night. He spoke clearly and slowly, but the disease is anything but precise. He gave a little summary of its history afloat and the remedies long in use in the Navy. He described the symptoms with some detail. Mental depression, debility, syncope, petechial, livid patches, spongy gums, lesions, swellings, and so on to things that are worse. He passed to some of the theories held and remedies tried in accordance with them. Sir Almorth Wright has hit the truth, he thinks, in finding increased acidity of blood – acid intoxication – by methods only possible in recent years… so far for diagnosis, but it does not bring us much closer to the cause, preventives, or remedies. Practically we are much as we were before, but the lecturer proceeded to deal with the practical side. In brief, he holds the first cause to be tainted food, but secondary, or contributory causes may be even more potent in developing the disease, damp, cold, over-exertion, bad air, bad light, in fact any condition exceptional to normal healthy existence. Remedies are merely to change these conditions for the better. Dietetically, fresh vegetables are the best curatives – the lecturer was doubtful of fresh meat, but admitted its possibility in Polar climate; lime juice only useful if regularly taken. He discussed lightly the relative values of vegetable stuffs, doubtful of those containing abundance of phosphates such as lentils… His remarks were extremely sound and practical as usual. He provided the value of fresh meat in Polar regions. Scurvy seems very far away from us this time; yet after our Discovery experience, one feels that no trouble can be too great or no precaution too small to be adopted to keep it at bay. Therefore such an evening as last was well spent. It is certain we shall not have the disease here, but one cannot foresee equally certain avoidance in the southern journey to come. All one can do is to take every possible precaution.’ (L Huxley, Scott’s Last Expedition, vol. 2, 1913 edition)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.