Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/109

Rh died because they have preferred to eat badly-cured fish and badly-prepared animal foods, instead of feeding on the food that the Almighty had placed at the very doors of their miserable and filthy huts.

Half the members of the British Polar Expedition of 1875–76 were saturated with scurvy, and expeditions as late as those of the Balæna (Weddell Sea, Antarctic), 1892–93, Windward (Franz Josef Land, Arctic), 1894–97, and the Discovery (Ross Sea, Antarctic), 1901–04, were all seriously crippled with the appearance of that terrible scourge. On shore at Cape Flora Dr. Reginald Kœttlitz was able to prevent scurvy because the leader and staff followed his advice and lived chiefly on bear meat and guillemots, but, as Dr. Neal has pointed out, nearly all the men on board the Windward "refused to eat bear meat, but lived on tinned provisions, with plenty of tinned vegetables and any amount of lime-juice. The whole ship's company, except three or four men, had scurvy, and those who did not have scurvy were the very ones who took bear's meat whenever they could get it. The ship arrived in Norway in September 1895, having lost three men from scurvy, and with fourteen others who would have been dead in a few days if they had not reached land."

For many a year lime-juice has been used