WI: a cure for scurvy was mentioned in the Bible

Deleted member 97083

The cure for scurvy was discovered, lost, and rediscovered many times throughout history--from Ancient Egypt in 1550 BC, to Phoenician traders, to Crusaders, to the Portuguese, to the British Empire (who actually forgot the cure to scurvy, during the golden age of the Royal Navy), to the final discovery of Vitamin C in 1912.

What if there was some passage in the Bible about a voyage in the eastern Mediterranean, that, as a small relatively unimportant detail, mentioned sailors preserving and eating either citrus, root vegetables, horse meat, or liver, to keep healthy at sea and prevent the sickness suffered from long voyages? This would preserve the cure for scurvy for 2000+ years, as the Bible is copied and recopied.

What would the effects be over the centuries as navies and trading networks develop?
 
The problem with curing scurvy was not one of knowledge, but of preservation. Fresh food had been known to cure scurvy for thousands of years. Whether everyone lost the knowledge and rediscovered it, or whether the knowledge was continuous (I've seen arguments either way), no-one had worked out how to cure the preservation problem.

The challenge was always how to preserve food once at sea. All of the traditional methods of preservation destroyed the Vitamin C, and any food kept without preservation would putrefy within too short a period. If the Bible said something like "eating of the root vegetable does cure scurvy", it wouldn't help because no-one could keep the root vegetables rot-free for long enough. Sailors often ate copiously of fresh food whenever they made landfall, but that could be too late for scurvy.

So it would need to be a detailed prescription of a food preservation method that works, and is replicable with preindustrial technology.
 
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Easy, Benjamin Franklin figured out with 95% alcohol, one could blow on it and cool a container below freezing. I'd say you'd be able to get maybe 7 days of refrigeration before you run out of alcohol.
 

Deleted member 97083

The problem with curing scurvy was not one of knowledge, but of preservation. Fresh food had been known to cure scurvy for thousands of years. Whether everyone lost the knowledge and rediscovered it, or whether the knowledge was continuous (I've seen arguments either way, no-one had worked out how to cure the preservation problem.

The challenge was always how to preserve food once at sea. All of the traditional methods of preservation destroyed the Vitamin C, and any food kept without preservation would putrefy within too short a period. If the Bible said something like "eating of the root vegetable does cure scurvy", it wouldn't help because no-one could keep the root vegetables free for long enough. Sailors often ate copiously of fresh food whenever they made landfall, but that could be too late for scurvy.

So it would need to be a detailed prescription of a food preservation method that works, and is replicable with preindustrial technology.
Well, they could eat fermented salted cabbage (Cato mentions this as a food that existed in the Roman Republic) or in other words, sauerkraut which James Cook used to prevent scurvy.

Some sort of heavily salted liver jerky might be feasible as well.
 

ben0628

Banned
Easy, Benjamin Franklin figured out with 95% alcohol, one could blow on it and cool a container below freezing. I'd say you'd be able to get maybe 7 days of refrigeration before you run out of alcohol.

Interesting. I never heard that before.
 
People forget the cure, misinterpret it, and otherwise not follow it, until scurvy actually is cured scientifically, where creationists and other types of Christians cite the Bible verse as another example of Biblical scientific foreknowledge.
 
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