How lemons became a lifeline for sailors

Arab traders took the lemon tree to West Asia, Europe and North Africa, filling gardens and courtyards 
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A long time ago in tropical Asia, humans came upon a shrub-like evergreen tree with a fruit so sour, it made their mouths pucker — lemon! Yet its exquisite fragrance could not be ignored, and over 1,400 years ago, bewitched Arab traders took it to West Asia, Europe and North Africa, filling gardens and courtyards with the heady scent and captivating sight of lemon blossoms. They learned to cultivate the lemon, celebrated it in their literature, extracted its aromatic oil to make soaps and perfumes, and used it in their food. Yet it took much longer for humans to realise that the lemon was also a cure for a dreadful illness called scurvy, that had been the bane of seafarers for thousands of years.

During the 15th century, as European empires set sail across the vast, uncharted ocean in search of distant lands and riches, countless seafarers fell prey to scurvy. It left their bodies weak. It made their joints ache. Their arms and legs swelled up and their skin bruised at the slightest touch. Their gums rotted and their breath smelled. Their teeth became loose. They bled easily and it was impossible to control the bleeding. The need for a cure became more urgent than ever before.

Scurvy is caused by a lack of vitamin C that helps to grow and repair tissues in our body. The human body, however, doesn’t produce this vitamin on its own. Instead, it comes from the food we eat. Citrus fruits like lemons are rich sources of vitamin C, but seafarers usually did not carry such produce on board. That’s why scurvy was common among them. It wasn’t until the mid-18th century that the Scottish physician James Lind proposed this as a cure for the disease, following one of the earliest clinical trials in medical history.

Experiment

In 1747, sailing aboard the British ship HMS Salisbury, Lind divided a group of 12 men suffering from scurvy into six pairs. Each pair was given a different treatment, one of which was a dose of two oranges and one lemon a day. By the end of a week, the pair given oranges and lemons recovered so successfully that they were able to help nurse the others!

Oranges and lemons are rich in Vitamin C
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Getty Images/iStockPhoto

Having observed this, Lind wrote about it in his Treatise of the Scurvy that appeared in 1753. However, the disease was such a massive problem that few were willing to believe it had such a simple cure, and it took more than 40 years before physician Gilbert Blane convinced the British Royal Navy to distribute some form of lemon juice to all its sailors. Although this earned British sailors the nickname ‘limeys’, it might well have been this order that helped Britain in its quest to build the most powerful navy in the world, conquer ocean navigation and establish the biggest empire the world had ever seen.