Regarding the fact that the English are very much their own, some time ago I read:«They drive on the left, they play things as enigmatic as cricket, they weigh and pay in pounds, they have a Church for their own consumption and they can be both gentlemen and hooligans .» Perhaps the differential fact lies in the fact that, of the current 200 countries in the world, there are only 22 that have never been invaded by British troops, buccaneers commissioned by them or corsairs with patents from the British Crown. Logically, for this they have had to face the attempts of conquest suffered by themselves, harass the rest of the powers that could face them, conquer a good part of the known world and maintain a colonial empire of that magnitude and, above all, for so long time, requires a large fleet, the best ships of each era, sea wolves at the head of intrepid crews... and waging a tough fight against scurvy .
Scurvy, caused by a deficiency of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) in the diet, has been with us for thousands of years. In fact, researchers from the University of Burgos and the Atapuerca team documented a case of scurvy in a child skeleton in an excellent state of preservation, located at the Portalón de Cueva Mayor site, whose remains are estimated to belong to a boy or girl who lived about 5,000 years ago. However, why is scurvy directly related to maritime expeditions and explorations from the 15th to the 18th century? Well, simply because it was the main cause of mortality among sailors, much greater than wars, meteorological phenomena or sinkings. And the reason is obvious, in addition to the hard day-to-day on the ship, the diet was based mainly on dried meat, salted meat, vegetables and a cake that, if it wasn't wet, there was no way to sink your teeth into it. Logically, fresh produce was in short supply and vitamin C was not expected on board. English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Portuguese... it didn't matter what flag flew on their ship, they all had to fight with the deadly scurvy, more feared than pirates or enemy ships.
Logically, there were many theories and remedies, with as much imagination as little result. Everything changed or, rather, began to change with the British doctor James Lind . He believed that the disease was caused by an imbalance in the diet (it was not going wrong) and that acids were needed to stabilize the organism. In May 1747, as physician to the Salisbury , he conducted an experiment with a dozen men affected by scurvy. He divided them into groups of two and gave each one one of the different remedies:vinegar, sulfuric acid, lemons and oranges, sea water, barley water and nutmeg. Only the group he gave oranges and lemons to overcame scurvy. In 1753 he published his experiment in the work A treatise on scurvy, and problem solved… Well no, because Lind screwed up. As was logical to think, he related the remedy to citrus fruits, but not to the vitamin C they contain. So, aware of the difficulty of preserving fresh products during the voyages, he came up with a system to preserve them:prepare a concentrate by boiling citrus fruits in water. And he screwed up, because when you boil them, vitamin C is reduced. Unfortunately, subsequent voyages using this method also suffered from scurvy and, unsurprisingly, Lind was denied bread and salt. Even so, among the people of the sea that story had not been forgotten and they continued to think that citrus fruits were behind the remedy. In 1780, the Scotsman Gilbert Blane , Royal Navy physician, published a report with recommendations for British sailors under the name On the most effective means of preserving the health of sailors, particularly in the Royal Navy, where, among many other considerations, citrus fruits were recovered to combat scurvy. Soon after, and as Commissioner of the Board of the Sick and Wounded of the Admiralty, he pressed until the Royal Nay established lemon or lemon juice as an essential element in the sailors' diet. In 1794, following Blane's recommendations and as a litmus test, the English admiral Alan Gardner took barrels of lemon juice on his non-stop voyage to India. There were hardly any cases of scurvy, and from 1795 all Royal Navy ships were required to carry fresh fruit and lemon juice. But since they were already very much theirs since then, they changed the lemon for the lime (lime ), which they obtained in the British colonies of the Caribbean. And this is why British sailors were called limey . But even today, in some countries, like Australia, New Zealand or South Africa, it is called limey to any Englishman, even if he is not a sailor.