Description of scurvy by Bachstrom (1734)

Description of scurvy by Bachstrom (1734) Summary by James Lind (1772) Bachstrom seems to be the first person to propose that there is something special in fruits and vegetables so that scurvy “is solely owing to a total abstinence from fresh vegetable food, and greens; which is alone the true primary cause of the disease.” James Lind firmly disagreed with such a supposition. This is James Lind’s English summary of the text that was originally published in Latin. Jo. Freder. Bachstrom, a Dutch physician. https://archive.org/details/treatiseonscurvy1772lind/page/552/mode/2up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Bachstrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachstrom_Point “Bachstrom Point … named … in 1959 for Johann Bachstrom, the author in 1734 of a classic pamphlet recognizing scurvy as a nutritional deficiency disease and prescribing the necessary measures for its prevention and cure.” Siege of Thorn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Thorn_(1703) https://www.wikiwand.com/en/map/Siege_of_Thorn_(1703) https://dbpedia.org/page/Siege_of_Thorn_(1703) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Toru%C5%84 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toru%C5%84 Yellow is used to indicate the more important sections. This text is available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17225783 2025-09-29 This annotated version was prepared by: Harri Hemilä, University of Helsinki, Finland https://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/hemila https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4710-307X https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=hemila+h https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2mkomzUAAAAJ https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17085738 Reports on scurvy uploaded to Zenodo by Harri Hemilä 1 Background George Yagi Jr. Surviving the wilderness: the diet of the British Army and the struggle for Canada, 1754–1760. Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research. 2011;89:66-86. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44231817 p.72 As early as 1734, Dr. John Bachstrom, a physician from Holland, had argued that scurvy was the due to ‘the absence of fresh (or “recent”) vegetable food from the diet for a considerable time.’ Monro's observations in Germany proved that Bachstrom's argument was correct. A simple solution was provided in 1751 by John Wesley, who advised those afflicted with the disease to ‘Live on turnips for a month.’ Ultimately, as hinted by Wesley, the most effective cure and defence against scurvy rested on the procu Baron JH. Sailors’ scurvy before and after James Lind – a reassessment. Nutr Rev. 2009 Jun;67(6):315-32. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1753-4887.2009.00205.x p.317 In 1734, Johann Bachstrom of Leyden (1686–1742) was one of the first to declare land scurvy and sea scurvy to be identical diseases and to attribute their cause to a deficiency of fresh vegetables, and therefore curable by fresh herbs, fruits, and berries. p.318 In his chronological abstracts, Lind clearly stated Kramer and Bachstrom’s unitary fresh vegetables hypothesis for cause and cure of scurvy. However, his own chapters on the causes and cures of scurvy are full of obscure and uncritical concepts, and one is left with his ideas that sea scurvy was due to excess perspiration, could be prevented by ventilation, and that many remedies could be used as well as citrus fruits and cresses. Carpenter KJ. The History of Scurvy and Vitamin C. 1986, p.249. https://www.cambridge.org/fi/academic/subjects/history/history-medicine/history-scurvy-and-vitamin-c p.44-45 In 1734, a very different evaluation was proposed, again from Holland, by John Bachstrom, a physician whose name does not appear in the standard histories of medicine. He postulated that there was only one cause of scurvy – the absence of fresh (or “recent”) vegetable food from the diet for a considerable time. There was no reason to suppose that a cold climate had anything to do with the disease because sailors in the Dutch East Indies fleet developed scurvy in the Tropics. Moreover, in the relatively recent siege of Thorn (Torun, Copernicus’s birthplace in Poland), many thousands of the garrison and inhabitants developed the disease; even though it took place in summer. (It lasted from mid-May to October 4, 1703) The besieging Swedes remained healthy, and those in the town quickly recovered when they had access to fresh greens and vegetables. Nor was there reason to suppose that damp or coastal conditions were required: At the end of a 2 campaign against the Turks, Austrian troops had spent the winter of 1719 – 20 in a devastated, inland part of Hungary and there had been a heavy loss of life from scurvy. No drugs were of any help, but with the coming of spring there were fresh green foods available and the men recovered. He gave other examples and urged the value of all kinds of green foods and fresh fruit, and recommended a diet rich in green vegetables as a preventive. He said that mineral acids, and specifically the popular sulfuric acid, were useless. With regard to niter he reserved judgment because it was a natural component of plants. Bachstrom’s treatise seems to the modern reader a straightforward argument and one that deserved at least a serious consideration. But to the contemporary main-line physician it would not have been very impressive because it dealt with a single disease in isolation and did nothing toward establishing a view of the nature of disease in general – an ideal which the medical profession had as its goal, by analogy with the universal laws being developed by the physicists at that time. In other words, he was “a mere empirick.” p.61 [Harriette] Chick has written that “to Bachstrom and Lind must go the recognition of scurvy as a nutritional deficiency disease.”1 However, Lind made it quite clear that he did not accept Bachstrom’s “supposition that … the constitution of the human body, is such that health and life cannot be preserved long, without the use of green herbage, vegetables, and fruits; and that a long abstinence from these, is alone the cause of the disease.” [See below] p.127 a paper read by Dr. Jean-Antoine Villemin. He is remembered today for his demonstrations nearly a decade earlier that tuberculosis was an infectious disease which could be transmitted from humans to animals and then from one animal to another. At the time, it had been thought to arise spontaneously as a consequence of the weakening effects of a poor environment, inadequate diet, and other debilitating conditions. For a long time, his work was either contested or ignored. We can see the influence of his previous experience in his analysis of scurvy. He made extensive use of the published literature, and argued from it on the following lines (here condensed and paraphrased): Scurvy is a contagious miasm, comparable to typhus, which occurs in epidemic form when people are closely congregated in large groups as in prisons, naval vessels and seiges. Admittedly, those in strongest condition are most resistant but it is ridiculous to suppose that a lack of fresh vegetables is the cause of the disease. It has been alleged that lack of potatoes was the cause of the outbreak in Western Europe in 1847; but some people must go without potatoes every year. As Lind said, in refuting this kind of argument from Bachstrom, there are many parts such as the Highlands of Scotland where vegetables are unavailable for six months at a time. And how can one explain the health of people in Greenland where they do not grow vegetables at any time? I [Villemin] have also kept a variety of animals in good health without providing them with any of the types of food which are considered antiscorbutic. The 1847 epidemic gradually spread eastwards, reaching Russia in 1848, killing 68,000 people in that year, and hanging on in small pockets after that. 1 Chick H. Early Investigations of Scurvy and the Antiscorbutic Vitamin. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society. 1953;12(3):210-219. https://doi.org/10.1079/PNS19530050 3 Certainly, fresh vegetables and lemon juice have a certain curative value, but do we, just because quinine can cure malaria, conclude that the cause of malaria is a deficiency of quinine? … p.251 … the people such as Bachstrom, Lind, Elliotson, Budd, and Holst, who made contributions and drew conclusions that we now consider well founded, seem equally consistently to have escaped the usual marks of general recognition and appreciation. Norris J. The scurvy disposition: heavy exertion as an exacerbating influence on scurvy in modern times. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 1983;57:325–38. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44441613 p.328-329 Perhaps the last notable example of this view, before the pathology of scurvy was overborne by the ptomaine thesis of Torup, was that of Thomas Colon, Fleet Surgeon to the Nares Arctic expedition of 1875-76, who, after attributing the long-term cause of scurvy on the expedition to the lack of fresh vegetables, fresh meat and lime juice, wrote: Any one of the following may have acted as a predisposing cause or causes;- Our long dark winter, the confinement between decks in a damp atmosphere forthe long period I have mentioned, the extreme changes of temperature undergone during the prevalence of the great cold. The exciting cause I can only attribute to the heavy physical work undergone. The passage over the frozen sea was of the heaviest description. Perhaps the only notable dissident from this view among those who had viewed the disease first-hand, was J.F. Bachstrom (1734), who, on the basis of his observations of scurvy at the siege of Thorn (1703), and elsewhere, concluded: “… the evil is solely owing to a total abstinence from fresh vegetable food and greens, which is alone the primary cause of the disease.” Scott and Scurvy. Can Med Assoc J. 1962 Jul 7;87(1):32-3. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1849291 In 1734 Johannes Bachstrom published an 85-page booklet in which he showed that sea scurvy and land scurvy were a single disease whose primary cause was lack of fresh fruits and vegetables. He invented the word antiscorbutic and stated unequivocally that only fresh herbs, fruit and vegetables had this property. He therefore advised sailors to carry more fresh vegetables in their stores and suggested that besieged soldiers should grow antiscorbutic plants from seeds upon their ramparts. Bachstrom’s views were not widely accepted. In his day many thought that scurvy was putrescent, an infectious disease. They ascribed it to using the wrong sort of salt for preserving meat. 4 Chick H. Early Investigations of Scurvy and the Antiscorbutic Vitamin. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society. 1953;12(3):210-219. https://doi.org/10.1079/PNS19530050 p.211 Bachstrom (1734), in his justly prized pamphlet, after reviewing the available evidence on the causes of scurvy, stated his belief that ‘From want of proper attention to the history of the scurvy, its causes have been generally, though wrongfully, supposed to be, cold in northern climates, sea air, the use of salt meats, etc.: whereas this evil is solely owing to a total abstinence from fresh vegetable food, and greens; which is alone the primary cause of the disease’, These foods, described as ‘antiscorbutic’ are declared to be alone its effective cure. It is to Bachstrom that we owe the dramatic tale of the helpless ‘sailor in the Greenland ships … so over-run and disabled with the scurvy’ that his comrades put him on shore to perish. He having ‘quite lost the use of his limbs … could only crawl about on the ground. This he found covered with a plant, which he, continually grasing like a beast of the field, plucked up with his teeth. In a short time he was by this means fully recovered; and, upon his returning home, it was found to have been the herb scurvy-grass’ (translations given by Lind, 1753, pp. 409, 411). Scurvy-grass (Cochlearia ofJicinalis), whose habitat is the ‘muddy sea shore’, is a plant of the Cruciferae, a natural order which contains many of our common green vegetables, including the cabbage and the swede turnip, both of which possess a high antiscorbutic potency. An old religious tradition ascribed the food value of these crucifers to the arrangement of their four petals in the form of a cross. p.212 To Bachstrom and Lind must be given credit for the correct recognition of scurvy as a nutritional deficiency disease and of the measures necessary for its prevention and cure … Kark RM. Ascorbic Acid in Relation to Cold, Scurvy, ACTH and Surgery. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society. 1953;12(3):279-293. https://doi.org/10.1079/PNS19530059 p.280 Lind (1753) also emphasized the importance of cold and its associated stresses as aetiological factors in scurvy, even though he had read Bachstrom (1734), who clearly indicated that cold and allied stresses play no part in producing the disease. Bachstrom had studied and reported an epidemic of scurvy which, appearing in the height of the summer of 1703, decimated 5000 of the besieged inhabitants of Thon, in Prussia. Drummond JC. Historical studies of English diet and nutrition: Lecture III. Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 1938;86246–58. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41361208 p.247-248 Scurvy in the Eighteenth Century If the mild form of scurvy, which had come to be known as land-scurvy, became less prevalent than it had been for many centuries previously, the same could 5 not be said for the dreaded sea-scurvy. It was the scourge of our Navy and our Mercantile Marine. Every account of the voyages of those days has its story of the ravages of scurvy. Every commander or ship’s surgeon had his own ideas how best to treat it. Most people still held that it was due to prolonged subsistence on salt food, lack of exercise, the harmful influence of sea air, etc., but although the curative action of fruits, particularly oranges, lemons and limes, was widely recognised, the disease was in no way associated with a deficiency of something which those foods contained. There was one doctor, however, who studied the subject carefully and came to that conclusion. Bachstrom, the famous Dutch physician, published an account of the disease and its treatment in 1734. In this little volume it is clearly stated that “Causam Veram et primariam Scorbuti nullam aliam esse, quam abstentiam diuturniarem a quocunque genere recentium vegetabilium.” Nothing could be more definite. It seems to be the first suggestion that the disease was caused by a deficiency in the diet. It not only made little impression at the time, but it was almost ignored by the medical profession for more than a century. The medical writings of the period on the subject of scurvy are voluminous and confusing. Most of them are mere circumlocution, reiterating the old arguments. Is the disease due to the eating of salt meat? What part does confinement aboard ship play? Are sea-airs and mists dangerous? It is easy to appreciate now, how their minds worked in days when the miasma of marshes was regarded as the cause of agues and fevers, and when confinement was believed to be the chief cause of gaol-fever. The literature of the period gives us one other outstanding work on scurvy, namely, the careful and critical study of Dr. James Lind, a naval surgeon, with many years’ experience of the disease. It is so remarkable a work that it alone might well form the subject of a group of three Cantor Lectures. Unfortunately, the space at my disposal does not permit me to make more than passing reference to the views expressed in this classic. Lind examined the various theories of the causation of scurvy, one by one, and finds most of them inadequate. How can salt be the chief cause, he asks, when the workers in the salt mines of Poland never get the disease? Bachstrom claims that the disease results from the absence of fresh vegetables from the diet. Surely this cannot be wholly true, otherwise those who live in the North of Europe and in Newfoundland would suffer, since they are often without fresh fruits and vegetables for four or five months in the year. He did not suspect what we know to-day, namely, that these people are in a state bordering on scurvy when the long winter ends. Martin GJ, Heise FH. Vitamin C nutrition in pulmonary tuberculosis. American Journal of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition. 1937;4:368-374. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02999935 p.372 … Bachstrom in 1734 (Observationes circa scorbutum) noted a relationship of tuberculosis and vitamin C nutrition. He stated that scurvy could be cured by fresh vegetables provided tuberculosis was not a compticating factor. The relationship has been assumed but not definitely established. 6 Stockman R. James Lind and Scurvy. Edinb Med J. 1926;33(6):329-350. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5302666 p.344 On the Continent, … Bachstrom published (1734) a small book of considerable value in which he asserts that abstinence from fresh vegetables is the one and only cause. Hess AF. Scurvy, Past and Present, 1920. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40505 p.3 In an essay published in the eighteenth century (1734), Bachstrom described an epidemic of scurvy which occurred in 1703 during the siege of Thorn, in Prussia, by the Swedes, which caused the death of 5000 of the garrison, in addition to a large number of the inhabitants. It is interesting to note that this epidemic took place in the middle of the summer, and not in the cold season. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/r7mfk27h/items?canvas=15 p.144 Bachstrom (Observationes circa Scorbutum, 1734) evidently was well-acquainted with the antiscorbutic value of scurvy grass, and relates the story of a sailor severely disabled from scurvy who was put ashore to perish on Greenland, and crawled on the ground, grazed on scurvy grass like a beast of the field, and was able to return home perfectly recovered. (Cited from Lind.) https://wellcomecollection.org/works/r7mfk27h/items?canvas=162 7 James Lind’s comments on Bachstrom: p.28 … But the contrary is demonstratively evinced, by the deplorable case of the sailor left behind at Greenland, related by Bachstrom and others, who was cured by scurvy-grass alone; https://archive.org/details/treatiseonscurvy1772lind/page/28/mode/2up p.33 [whether the land scurvy and sea scurvy are different] ... The cure of scorbutic diseases contracted either at land or sea, is entirely the same. This will appear to any person who peruses Bachstrom’s and Kramer’s observations, and several other histories related in this treatise. https://archive.org/details/treatiseonscurvy1772lind/page/32/mode/2up p.44-45 Thus, where the causes productive of it [scurvy] are general, and violent in a high degree, it becomes an epidemic or universal calamity, and rages with great and diffusive virulence: as happens often to seamen in long voyages; sometimes to armies (Nitzsch), very lately to the German soldiers in Hungary (Kramer); frequently to troops when closely besieged, as to the Saxon garrison in Thorn (Bachstrom), the besieged in Breda (Vander Mye), in Rochelle, as also Stetin: and at other times to whole countries; as in Brabant, in the year 1556; and in Holland, ann. 1562. https://archive.org/details/treatiseonscurvy1772lind/page/44/mode/2up p.50 Others, again have supposed such to be the constitution of the human body, that health and life cannot be preserved long, without the use of green herbage, vegetables and fruits; and that a long abstinence from these, is alone the cause of the disease (Bachstrom). But if this were truly the case, we must have had the scurvy very accurately described 8 by the antients; whose chief study seems to have been the art of war; and whose manner of besieging towns was generally by blockade, till they had forced a surrender by famine. Now, as they held out many months, sometimes years, without a supply of vegetables: we should, no doubt, have heard of many dying of the scurvy, long before the magazines of dry provisions were exhausted. The continuance of those sieges far exceeded most of our modern ones; even the five months blockade of Thorn, upon which Bachstrom had founded this supposition. It would likewise be a much more frequent disease in every country, than it really is: for there are persons every where, who, from choice, eat few or no green vegetables; and some countries are deprived of the use of them for five or six months of the year; as is the case of many parts in the highlands of Scotland, Newfoundland, &c. where, however, the scurvy is unusual. https://archive.org/details/treatiseonscurvy1772lind/page/50/mode/2up p.81-82 Moreover, the same causes when subsistting at land, have been found sometimes to give rise to as violent scurvies as those at sea (Vander Mye). Thus during the siege of Thorn in the year 1703, several thousand Saxons shut up in that city were cutoff by it at the latter end of the siege, they having been blockaded for five months, the season appears to have been uncommonly tempestuous and rainy, over most parts of Europe: so that, in this situation, the inconveniences and hardships they suffered, must have been equal to those of seamen. They were continually exposed to unwholesome damp weather; their diet was gross and indigestible, as ammunitionbread, salted and dried meats, and other solid and coarse food; which they were at that time obliged to live upon, being deprived of vegetables. 9