Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail

This lively history of the dreaded disease "weav[es] a tale of medical discovery into a swashbuckling adventure on the high seas" (The Toronto Star).

Scurvy took a terrible toll in the Age of Sail, killing more sailors than were lost in all naval combat combined. The threat of the disease kept ships close to home and doomed those vessels that ventured too far from port. The willful ignorance of the royal medical elite, who endorsed ludicrous medical theories while ignoring the life-saving p...