Scurvy

a disease which breaks out wherever people are confined with improper food, as in armies, prisons, workhouses, and on shipboard. Some have thought that it is due, like smallpox and other epidemics, to some bacterium or minute animal; and others that its cause is simple want of proper nutrition. About one-seventh of the deaths occurring during our late Civil War from causes other than wounds were attributed to scurvy. A long continued diet of bread and salt meat alone is held responsible for most of the scurvy aboard ships. The best cure seems to be a vegetable diet. Cranberries are a preventive. Since the addition of canned vegetables, lemons, lime juice, and similar articles to ships' stores, sailors are seldom seized by scurvy. In the case of an individual attacked by this disease, physicians recommend exercise, fresh air, and sunlight, with a diet of potatoes, onions, fresh meat, and milk and eggs, with all the lemons and oranges that the appetite craves. See Kerguelen Land