Lands of Red and Gold, Act II
- Thread starter Jared
- Start date
One hopes that this is an 'unreliable witness'.
Having looked at the history of antiscorbutics myself, I am disgusted by the 20-20 hindsight of modern writers, and the total disdain they held early modern naval establishments in.
Everyone involved knew darned well that fresh food would cure scurvy. (OK, maybe aside from those physicians who theorized on the topic.) The problem, of course, is that, pretty much by definition, food available on a long sea voyage isn't fresh. People then say 'X showed that limes worked, why didn't they listen to X', when they bloody well did. They sent lime juice out, and it was ineffective (e.g. due to preparation or exposure to air)! So they then went back to other methods.
Now. Your 5 River physicians do have a huge advantage, having some vague clue of the scientific method, and the ability to INDUCE scurvy at will to test for cures. That DOES put them a large step ahead of Europeans, who had to send people on very long expeditions to try out cures. That IS good, and that IS believable. I do applaud you for this 'plot twist'.
One of the disadvantages of sauerkraut (and presumably minabee) is that it is, IIRC, pretty low in Vitamin C, so instead of being able to give each man a tot of rum and lime juice (as the RN eventually learned how to do), you had to feed the sailors that as a perceptible chunk of their diet. How big a chunk, I don't know, as I don't believe the RN gave sauerkraut a serious try. Another disadvantage is the necessity of a hermetic seal. Unlike salt meat or peas or oatmeal or the other bulk food that the RN used, you can't store sauerkraut in barrels (or sack), but it needs to be in pottery vessels that are sealed against air. Moreover, how do you prevent these storage vessels from cracking when everything in the ship is being violently shaken in a storm?
As a minor subquery, has anyone iOTL actually tried to make sauerkraut-oid out of yams? Would it work? How do you stop the yams from fermenting into beer instead of into minabee?
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Goats. When did the Nuttana develop lactose tolerance? I don't remember them milking any mammals historically, especially since the only native Aururian placentals are bats (iirc). If goat milk has enough vitamin C to slow scurvy, but causes vomiting and diarrhoea, are they any further ahead? Would the physicians even discover goat milk was an antiscorbutic at all, since the diarrhoea of lactose intolerance could easily be mistaken for that of scurvy.
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Next. Why would Europeans avoid a proven Aururian cure?
Would the RN look down their nose at a 'native' cure? Quite possibly. Would the Honourable John/Jan/Jean companies do the same? Possibly. Would ALL of them issue a diktat that the native cure be ignored? Nope. Firstly, because they'd more likely ignore it than oppose it, at least initially.
OK. So far, your theory sounds good. But it founders on a major flaw.
Captains were Gods. Individual captains dressed their sailors in a specific uniform, if they wanted. Made them eat some remedy that they were convinced was efficatious. Could do just about anything they wanted, as long as it didn't violate Navy Regs.
If ONE SINGLE captain in any one of those navies or East India companies, a single one, follows the Aururian method and comes home EVERY VOYAGE with not a single man lost to scurvy, I assure you the Europeans will pick the method up. OK, it will take a while as other captains try it out, and the home office tries to stop 'superstitious native practices' for a while, and while they experiment with mass producing the same result in London/Amsterdam/St.Malo, so it might take a decade. Maybe even a touch longer.
But people were desperate for a cure. Given them something they could reliably reproduce, and they WILL leap on it. (Yes, it will be a slow motion leap....)
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BTW, your 4-6 weeks for scurvy to develop seems a bit optimistic to me. Firstly getting ALL vitamin C out of a land based diet's going to be tough. Secondly, the earliest symptoms (which do seem to come in ~4 weeks, yes) tend to be tiredness, and other fairly general symptoms that, I would think aren't immediately differentiable from any one of many other ailments. Especially if you've only got a handful of guinea pigs to try it out on. (Speaking of which, too bad they don't have guinea pigs, which, iirc, are one of the few other mammals with the same metabolic deficiency as humans here.)
I'd increase that number to say 8-10 weeks, maybe. I think that'd be safer.
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An alternate solution MIGHT be plant sprouts. One hears stories of Chinese sailors and mung bean sprouts warding off scurvy. Storing dry seed, and then sprouting them as needed would get around some of the necessity for hermetic seals.
While not nearly as Vitamin C rich as e.g. citrus juice, many sprouts are like 1/4 as good by weight, but that's still not bad.
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There's nothing worse than a beautiful theory that turns out to be wrong.
Working off my phone so can't give a full reply to everything yet, but thought I'd answer this question first.
Certainly both of them would have the first primitive printing presses by the late 1650s, and quite possibly earlier.
I haven't specified the exact year, but the two earliest adopters were the Nangu on the Island, and the Tjibarri in the Five Rivers. The Nangu for printing religious texts, and the Tjibarri because they are a highly literate society in general and produce a lot of written works.
Certainly both of them would have the first primitive printing presses by the late 1650s, and quite possibly earlier.
It's certainly an Aururian qualification. It's not necessarily linked to the Panipat - which, while it is the most prestigious Aururian educational institution, is certainly not the only one.
There was some of that going on, but as Dathi THorfinnsson has pointed out, this isn't an entirely reliable witness either. Barriers of language played a large part too. For instance, it's all very well to comment on European soldiers serving alongside Five Rivers soldiers, but that doesn't help much when few of them speak each others' languages and those that do aren't necessarily doing much more communication than that needed to arrange military matters.
I wouldn't enjoy it, but it beats having your teeth fall out, I guess.
Keep it up, Jared!
It certainly is in some respects. The anti-European bias I presume is obvious; other unreliable factors are less obvious but still there. Such as not realising how a solution is only "obvious" once you already know what it is.
Some people knew, certainly. I've never been able to find out how widespread that knowledge was, or more importantly, how vigorously it was applied at every port and island passed at stopping to get fresh food. Captain Cook managed to lose not a single sailor to scurvy, and the main part of that was simply stopping to top up with fresh food whenever he could, and making sure that sailors ate that fresh food, too. Maybe he just had more opportunity than other captains, but it is impressive nonetheless.
The physicians had some odd theories. It's not that they were stupid, it's just that the tradition was very much against actual experimentation on patients (and, to be fair, it's rather hard to experiment anyway unless you had first worked out how to induce scurvy), so they had no way of knowing if any of their theories worked or not. If others tried their theories and failed, it would not necessarily be easy for the physician to know whether the cure didn't work, or just whether it hadn't been applied properly. Then again, if the sources I've read can be believed, the Royal Navy was still trying elixir of vitriol for about a century, even though it had no known effectiveness whatsoever. If that's accurate (it may well not be), it does suggest a certain doggedness on the part of the British naval establishment, at least.
Though things weren't helped when even Lind, who had reiterated the use of lime juice to cure scurvy, got distracted by the idea of boiling it to concentrate it, neatly destroying the Vitamin C it contained. Whoops.
The Vitamin C certainly isn't as concentrated in murnong as it is in lime juice, though it's not insubstantial either. It needs to be a significant chunk of their diet to stop it completely, although even a reduced dose helps to stave off scurvy for much longer. (As stated in the text, it made scurvy much less of a problem; it didn't stop it entirely.)
Yes, it needs to be sealed, so it takes careful packing. It does help that the other bulk food being used (which is dried) can be packed in sacks around it, reducing though not eliminating the change of breakage. It also helps that Nuttana ship design, being catamarans, allows more stability in key parts of the hull. (Of course, even without that, the EIC managed to import porcelain from China to Europe as bulk cargo and not break it, so presumably the storage problems are solvable.)
Just cut them up into small chunks, salt them sufficiently but without water (the water draws out enough fluid), and seal them. The salt draws out some moisture to pickle them, but the bacteria favoured are those which do lactic acid fermentation rather than the yeast which releases amylases (and thus break it down into beer). It's the exact process used to make kimchi in OTL when making it out of white radishes.
The Nuttana don't have full lactose tolerance, except for a few individuals with some European or Bengali ancestry. It's just that for most people, lactose intolerance doesn't mean no ability to consume milk. There's a threshold, which for most lactose-intolerant people is usually around 1 cup (250 mL) or more. Of course there are some individuals who are more sensitive, but for the bulk of the population that would be about right. Given how much milk would be divided between sailors, particularly on rotation, they would not be drinking more than 1 cup. It's not a complete preventative for scurvy - the Vitamin C dose in goat's milk isn't high enough for that - but again, it delays things.
Diagnosing lactose intolerance is not a problem, since it's one which Five Rivers physicians worked out decades ago. Having been using dairy animals (to a point) for over half a century by this point, they have a pretty good idea of what's a tolerable dose and what isn't.
Cultural and language barriers were a problem, but the biggest problem of all, which was left out (again, unreliable witness who clearly wanted to denigrate Europeans of the era as being cultural chauvinists at best or racists at worst) is that Europeans can't reliably reproduce the minabee. Goat's milk is fairly straightforward, but as per above that's not a complete solution. The process of producing minabee is not obviously the same as sauerkraut, since one is a leaf vegetable and the other is a root vegetable. It's also not a widespread product in Aururia, so it's not like Europeans can just grab a random Aururian and ask them. All most of them know is "you use minabee". They don't know how to make it, or really want to find out either. Except in a specialised area which is not where Europeans visit, people don't care for the taste of it much, so they have no particular inclination to do so.
They don't get it right first time, but they do learn what foods induce it (basically, anything salted and dried, of course) and what sailors By the time they've been doing it for a decade or two, they can do it pretty reliably.
The symptoms aren't easy to distinguish if people are getting randomly sick, and for the first few times, yes, it will take longer for sure. But if you've been inducing it for a while, and have everyone catching it around the same time, it's easier to judge that it's scurvy. So I figured 4-6 weeks was about right. With zero Vitamin C in the diet, or close to it, average onset of symptoms is 4 weeks or so, and allow a couple of weeks longer to be sure that the symptoms weren't a mistake, then apply cures. I am open to extending that time if it remains a stretch.
I did actually think about having guinea pigs appear in the tale too, incidentally, but figured it was too much of a stretch for Aururians to discover that guinea pigs got the same problems with scurvy. If they had acquired significant numbers of guinea pigs and worked that out, it would make testing cures much more efficient.
That is an intriguing idea - thanks. Something like that almost worked with wort of malt (which is partly-sprouted seeds), but the problem again is that they heat-dry it again.
I figure that Five Rivers physicians would keep working sporadically on scurvy cures - though not at the same urgency - so it's possible someone will figure out a better method somewhere along the way.
Quite. I can't emphasise enough that the physicians of the time were not stupid, just products of their time. Practical tests were not what was done. Some of their reasoning was ingenious, particularly that which led to wort of malt. It just happened to be wrong, like lots of ideas throughout history.
Closest equivalent in OTL would be white-radish kimchi, though it does depend what flavourings have been added. Koreans add flavourings in OTL, and so do Aururians ITTL.
The French worked it out first in OTL, but there's nothing to stop the Royal Navy taking it up, since they will on the whole have more need of it than the French Navy.
If they have printing presses they're going to need paper. Will they import it or will paper mills also be appearing in the Aururian tech package?
And what will they use to make the paper?
And what will they use to make the paper?
In the short run they will probably import paper, but it won't take them too long to set up paper mills themselves, particularly in the Five Rivers. Paper is one of those things which is relatively easy to make once you know the process and have a market for it. Paper mills will also have some small side benefits in terms of moving toward being capable of taking up industrialisation later, though they won't drive industrialisation in themselves, being too small a part of an economy.
For paper, they have plentiful timber from wattles, in terms of the scale they would need for now. In the long run, they may need to set up other things such as expanding bluegum plantations, which would give abundant timber for pulping purposes. (Plant them, clear fell every ten years, they regenerate on their own, come back in another ten years and repeat).
I just had a silly thought.
Koalas are known as "Koala bears" (even if they aren't bears at all)
Koalas live in and from Eucalyptus trees (gum trees)
So...
Koalas are Gummi Bears?
Koalas are known as "Koala bears" (even if they aren't bears at all)
Koalas live in and from Eucalyptus trees (gum trees)
So...
Koalas are Gummi Bears?
The unreliable narrator gives very limited clues to the context of this writing. A French first and last name but highly Eurosceptic, as well as a PHD student with an MD as well as a 'TjY'. Is that an OTL qualification I've just never heard of, or does it indicate something else entirely? Given the pro-Aururian stance I presume this fellow has at least some connections to the southern continent, but if he's writing in a modern context he may well just have interests/sympathies there with no geographic or ethno-cultural connections. Plenty of those in modern western universities, myself included. No year of publication either, not that that would give us any hints in such a long TL. One question Jared, have you dropped many important hints in the various author names/titles/locations as in your other works? LoRaG is a bit different structurally if only due to its scope, but would it be worth my time hunting all the way back through the authors/titles in search of hints for the future of the TL?
EDIT: Should have read other's comments more closely. TjY is an ATL qualification, apparently an Aururian one. Still does not shed too much light on either the author or the world, except perhaps that non-Aururians might come down under in order to study. That's not too surprising though. I suppose at least it means that modern Aururia is a reasonably nice place... at least parts of it.
EDIT2: Wild guess, TjY is a Five Rivers qualification, taking the Tj from Tjibarr and the Y from Yigutji.
EDIT: Should have read other's comments more closely. TjY is an ATL qualification, apparently an Aururian one. Still does not shed too much light on either the author or the world, except perhaps that non-Aururians might come down under in order to study. That's not too surprising though. I suppose at least it means that modern Aururia is a reasonably nice place... at least parts of it.
EDIT2: Wild guess, TjY is a Five Rivers qualification, taking the Tj from Tjibarr and the Y from Yigutji.
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Australia still has significant timber logging today, mostly in the south-east of the country and Tasmania. Modern Australia imports more forest products than it exports, although that's because it tends to export more timber and import more finished products (including paper). The vagaries of comparative advantage at work, I suppose, but there's no shortage of timber reserves (about 125 million hectares).
When it comes to the timber being used by the Nangu, Five Rivers and Yadji (the first papermakers) in excess of what can be obtained from wattles, the Nangu would get it from the Eyre Peninsula (a bit) but mostly from Tasmania. The Five Rivers would get it from the ranges on the southern and eastern outskirts, while the Yadji would get it from their northern outskirts and, to a lesser degree, around the Otways.
The southern blue-gum and also the shining gum (Eucalyptus nitens) are the main plantation species used today. There's also a lot of use of plantations of the imported species Pinus radiata.
I must admit, I gave serious thought to having the most common native name for the koala be gummee.
The context is ambiguous, of course, although as was spotted below, yes, TjY is definitely an Aururian qualification.
I can give some context, in that regardless of the name being French, this work was written in English, it's not "translated". Also, it's not clear whether the author is pro-Aururian so much as anti-European. So it's possible that, to use an OTL example, this might be someone who is disdainful of perceived "European imperialism" (and there is a lot in European imperialism to be disdainful about, of course) and lets that attitude spread further. Alternatively, it could be someone who is from somewhere nearer Aururia - or maybe even in Aururia - who is generally more pro-Aururian and anti-European.
There are some hints amongst the authors/titles, but much less than in, say, Decades of Darkness, and ones which will probably be even harder to glimpse than those in DoD were. This is a different kind of work to that, with a world which is changed at a much more fundamental level, and changed much earlier. As I've made explicit a few times, the publication/setting dates of later sections should not be taken as fixed, since it depends on estimates of social and technological developments which I may have to revise. The relative dates are right, in the sense that if some "future glimpse" post is set at a later date than another "future glimpse" post, it is planned to happen later - but the actual years may well change.
If you do want to read a list of LoRaG ATL titles and authors which may give some future glimpses, albeit not many, a useful place to start would be this ATL essay which has a variety of references in it.
The reference to TjY was included mostly to show that separate Aururian qualifications are considered worth mentioning in the ATL modern world... at least to some academics.
I will say that there is enough foreshadowing in some of the earlier posts to make clear that using at least one of those two names (Tjibarr and/or Yigutji) would only be a historical reference in "modern" Aururia, and not a particularly well-known historical reference at that.
Thanks Jared, all very interesting. I don't actually recall reading that essay, but given that you posted in while I was in year 12 I possibly missed, all those years ago... Rereading LoRaG can be added to my summer reading list.
Eucalyptus, in general, is an incredibly quickly growing tree. And the wood's better than, e.g. poplar.
I believe it's pretty easy to get significant sustainable production with Eucalyptus.
Hope it gives you a few happy days.
Some of it quite controversially, but yes, there is a bit of that going on. Not very much these days because there's not as much of the tropical forests left. There's also a lot of other plantations in warmer regions of SE Queensland.
Yes, I believe Eucalypus is the most widely used group of trees in plantations around the world, with their fast growth being one of their prime attractions.
I imagine the same is happening in TTL but from an even earlier point in time considering that at least the Nuttana and the Kiyungu city-states must be exploiting the rainforests for shipbuilding lumber.
At least there are wattles to make sure that wood used for fuel or papermaking are from a more reliable source.
On an unrelated note, have any Aururian nations imported any crops that can be used medicinally / pharmaceutically? I was thinking of the opium poppy for one since it's used to produce both a very useful analgesic as well as an addictive recreational drug.
I also thought that the Nuttana and Kiyungu can similarly go instead to growing kratom, which they could adopt from Southeast Asia. Not only has it been used in the same medicinal capacity as opiates have, having decent analgesic properties, it has also been used recreationally for both its sedative and stimulant properties (it has been used by those who need to work harder and by those who want to relax both, the different effects produced by different cultivars and dosages). Given that, it may hold some promise as a cash crop.
Is the author a Plirite? Or just an anti-imperialist in general, in a world where many of those types might find that Aururian qualifications are useful to have for one reason or another? But how would these qualifications be viewed amongst a more "normal" sort of academic, unless it indeed is normal to gain Aururian qualifications in many fields? Alternatively, as he's writing about Aururia (as a medical historian?), he is a specialist in Aururian (medical) history and thus might find it useful to gain those qualifications?
Is this a reference to any action taken by the Hunter against the Five Rivers? Or something less dramatic?