ANATOMY
BOW Find a nutritional disease, i.e. scurvey Describe the cause of the
disease, the symptoms and a treatment.
Scurvy is a disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C, which is required for the synthesis of collagen
in humans. The chemical name for vitamin C, ascorbic acid, is derived from the Latin name of scurvy, scorbutic
, which also provides the adjective scorbutic of, characterized by or having to do with scurvy. Scurvy
presents itself initially as symptoms of malaise and lethargy, followed
by formation of spots on the skin, spongy gums, and bleeding from the mucous membranes.
Spots are most abundant on the thighs and legs, and a person with the
ailment looks pale, feels depressed, and is partially immobilized. As
scurvy advances, there can be open, suppurating wounds, loss of teeth, jaundice, fever, neuropathy and death.T oday scurvy is known to be caused by a nutritional deficiency, but
until the isolation of vitamin C and its direct link to scurvy in 1932,
numerous theories and treatments were proposed, often on little or no
experimental data. This inconsistency is attributed to the lack of
vitamin C as a distinct concept, the varying vitamin C content of
different foods (notably present in fresh citrus, watercress, and organ
meat), and how vitamin C can be destroyed by exposure to air and copper.
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a b Lind, James (1753). A Treatise on the Scurvy. London: A. Millar.
