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Scurvy: The Disease of Discovery

Online ISBN:
9781400884544
Print ISBN:
9780691182933
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Book

Scurvy: The Disease of Discovery

Jonathan Lamb
Jonathan Lamb
Vanderbilt University
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Published online:
24 January 2019
Published in print:
20 November 2018
Online ISBN:
9781400884544
Print ISBN:
9780691182933
Publisher:
Princeton University Press

Abstract

Scurvy, a disease often associated with long stretches of maritime travel, generated sensations exceeding the standard of what was normal. Eyes dazzled, skin was morbidly sensitive, emotions veered between disgust and delight. This book presents an intellectual history of scurvy to tell the story of the disease that its victims couldn't because they found their illness too terrible and, in some cases, too exciting. The book traces the cultural impact of scurvy during the eighteenth-century age of geographical and scientific discovery. It explains the medical knowledge surrounding scurvy and the debates about its cause, prevention, and attempted cures. The book vividly describes the phenomenon and experience of “scorbutic nostalgia”, in which victims imagined mirages of food, water, or home, and then wept when such pleasures proved impossible to consume or reach. It argues that a culture of scurvy arose in the colony of Australia, which was prey to the disease in its early years, and identifies a literature of scurvy in the works of such figures as Herman Melville, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Francis Bacon, and Jonathan Swift. The book shows how the journeys of discovery in the eighteenth century not only ventured outward to the ends of the earth, but were also an inward voyage into the realms of sensation and passion.

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