Today, it is widely known that scurvy is a disease caused by lack of vitamin C in an individual's food diet. Since the human body cannot synthesize vitamin C, it is very important that it be incorporated by the daily ingestion of food that is vitamin C rich, such as fruit and vegetables, to avoid its deficiency and the appearance of scurvy symptoms. However, before vitamin C and its importance for the organism were determined, scurvy was considered an epidemic disease in some regions of Europe.

The most common symptoms of the disease are: fatigue, muscular and joint pain, spontaneous hemorrhage in gums and skin that take a long time to heal.

For a long time, scurvy was a disease of unknown origins. It was considered one of the illnesses of the Middle Ages, which particularly afflicted crews of ships that performed long trips at the time. Because of the epidemics in the ships, scurvy was attributed to the most curious origins, such as, for example, that the disease was a result of "corrupted" blood, or due to the cold temperatures of the sea, or even because of the green wood used to build boats. The Spanish navigators referred to it as "Pest of the Ships", the Portuguese called it "the disease of Luanda", and the British as "Pest of the Seas".

Fear and deaths caused by scurvy led it to be treated as a contagious disease during more than 250 years and contributed to a number of curious treatments to get rid of it.

Those treatments were used without success until a physician of the British navy James Lindt (1716-1794), began his experiments with diseased crews. Because of sailors' and soldiers' diet during their military campaigns, and the fact that in general they were not fed with sufficient quantities of Vitamin C, because fresh fruit and vegetables did not resist long sea voyages, they had gum bleeding, loose teeth, hemorrhages, painful joints, lethargy and bruises that did not heal, which were the symptoms of scurvy. James Lindt chose twelve sailors affected by the disease and administered to them six different diets, to verify their evolution. Lindt discovered that only the group that received lemon and orange juice as part of the diet evolved favorably from their condition. Although the causal agent of scurvy was not identified (absence of vitamin C), its cure became known and sailors of the British Fleet were nicknamed "limely", or lemon drinkers. The medicine for scurvy was rapidly adopted in other countries.

Scurvy, which attacked millions of persons from the Ancient Egypt to the end of the 19th Century, causing the death of more than 2 million sailors between 1500 and 1900, influence the course of History. Despite the discovery of how scurvy could be cured - which was disclosed in the book " A Study of Scurvy", written by James Lindt in 1753, in which he stated that orange and lemon were effective medicine against the disease - vitamin C isolation and the identification of its deficiency as the cause of scurvy appeared much later.

Linus Pauling, who received the Nobel prize twice, used to say that he would like to be remembered as the " person that discovered Vitamin C". Although the first isolation of vitamin C had been obtained by Hungarian scientist Albert Szent-Györgyi in 1928, it was "re-discovered" by Pauling in 1967. It was Pauling who proved the importance of therapies based on vitamin C consumption for infectious processes, such as flu, dedicating a good part of his life to study the substance. During the latter part of his life, Linus Pauling published a study reporting that significant concentrations of Vitamin C can prevent, in vitro, the duplication of the HIV virus.

Today, after many scientific works were developed about Vitamin C, it is known that vitamin C is indispensable to the good working conditions of our organism. Known as a very versatile substance, this vitamin that once was the cure for scurvy, has a much broader role: it participates in forming and maintaining collagen in human organisms. Collagen is the substance that provides muscle, tissue, teeth and bone sustentation; it helps healing bruises, it acts in the immunologic system; it helps transport and absorb iron into our organism; it contributes to fix calcium in bones, therefore fighting osteoporosis; it protects the walls of blood vessels, and it has antioxidant action. Furthermore, there are evidences that Vitamin C can increase HDL levels - the good cholesterol - helping to eliminate fat deposits in our arteries, and reducing the risk of cardiovascular diseases.

Since our organism does not produce Vitamin C, Vitamin C must be ingested daily, by consuming fruit and fruit juice with high content of Vitamin C, such as orange, lemon and other citrus fruit.

Sources: Laranja Brasil / USP / Consumer - Spain