1775 - Nutrition

Nutrition

The Royal Society awards Captain James Cook, Royal Navy, its Gold Copley Medal for having conquered scurvy. The navy's Sick and Hurt Board loaded H.M.S. Resolution with various experimental antiscorbutics, Cook told his sailors that sauerkraut was being served each day to the officers and gentlemen aboard, the men soon followed suit, but Cook's real success was based far less on antiscorbutics than on his zealous efforts to obtain fresh food at every port. Sir John Pringle, now 68, chief medical officer of the British army and physician to George III, hails Captain Cook's achievement in bringing 118 men through all climates for 3 years and 18 days "with the loss of only one man by distemper," even though he has gone for as many as 117 days in extreme latitudes without touching land, and while Cook may "entertaine no great opinion of [the] antiscorbutic virtue" of concentrated citrus juices, Pringle suggests that he may be mistaken (see 1794; Lind, 1757).