Treatments For Scurvy

When individuals hear the word ‘scurvy,’ visions of pirates with peg legs, maps to buried treasure, walking the plank, and sailing the high seas in a grand ship tend to come to mind. While these pirates are the work of television and movies, their association with scurvy isn’t too far from the truth. Namely, scurvy is an affliction that has been around since the time of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, though it became more prevalent with sailors in the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Scurvy is the name for a severe vitamin C deficiency that can lead to anemia, exhaustion, spontaneous bleeding, leg pain, swelling, and loss of teeth.