Reviewed by Mose Mosley

In the first years of the 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte had more than 130,000 troops massed on the southeastern side of the English channel waiting patiently for a chance to invade England. Napoleon’s troops were nearly invincible on land, thus the channel was a slim water barrier between Napoleon and the conquest of Great Britain. Such a victory would most certainly have paved the way for his total control of Europe.

But Napoleon’s invasion plans were thwarted by a blockade of French ports by the British Royal Navy. Hundreds of British ships took part, and thousands of British sailors manned those ships year round for almost twenty years. The ships could not easily re-supply, and without fresh food the sailors would have quickly succumbed to the ravages of vitamin-C deficiency syndrome, a horrible disease called scurvy. This didn’t happen because the Royal Navy required its mariners be given a daily dose of lemon juice. Although no one knew why this worked, the lemon juice kept scurvy in check, and with it Napoleon Bonaparte, who was eventually defeated in the 1815 Battle of Waterloo. The conquest of scurvy in the late 18th century saved the British nation and changed the course of history.

This is the general hypothesis of Stephen R. Brown’s book about the conquest of scurvy. During the Age of Sail (roughly between the voyage of Columbus and the advent of steam power) Brown estimates that more than 2 million sailors died of scurvy. Brown details the effects of scurvy on the human body and carefully explains why it was so difficult for early scientists to find its cause. Along with his history of scurvy as a disease, Brown focuses on the lives of three men who helped find its cure: the ship’s surgeon James Lind who experimented and found --and then lost -- the cure; the mariner Capt. James Cook, who cured it among his crew but didn’t know why; and the aristocrat Gilbert Blane whose political connections eventually turned the tide in implementing a practical cure. Brown’s insight into the psychology and politics of the age succeeds in putting a human face on the history and keeps it from becoming a compendium of ghastly deaths and miracle cures.