Journal Articles
Greenstone, G. (2014). War and healing: many of history’s transformational medical innovations were born on the battlefield. Military History, (6). 38.
The history of human conflict inevitably calls to mind battlefields strewn with the dead and dying. In the earliest clashes warriors brutally hacked and slashed their way through the ranks,
Baron, J. H. (2009). Sailors’ scurvy before and after James Lind–a reassessment. Nutrition Reviews, (6), 315.
Scurvy is a thousand-year-old stereotypical disease characterized by apathy, weakness, easy bruising with tiny or large skin hemorrhages, friable bleeding gums, and swollen legs. Untreated patients may die. In the last five centuries sailors and some ships’ doctors used oranges and lemons to cure and prevent scurvy, yet university-trained European physicians with no experience of either the disease or its cure by citrus fruits persisted in reviews of the extensive but conflicting literature. In the 20th century scurvy was shown to be due to a deficiency of the essential food factor ascorbic acid. This vitamin C was synthesized, and in adequate quantities it completely prevents and completely cures the disease, which is now rare. The protagonist of this medical history was James Lind.
Leavesley, J. (2007). Curing a seafaring curse. Australian Doctor, (00).
Mellinkoff, S. M. (1995). James Lind’s legacy to clinical medicine. The Western Journal of Medicine, (4). 367.
An 18th-century exemplar of an astute clinician was James Lind of Edinburgh, Scotland. Long before the discovery of malarial parasites, Dr Lind questioned sailors about where they had traveled before