Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0036474 (scurvy)
 685 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Two hundred years ago, the United States was just emerging as a new nation. Chemistry and biology, on which the science of nutrition is based, were also just beginning or in their infancy. Dietetics and nutrition education, being applied sciences, were concerned then--as they are now--with the solution of practical problems of everyday living. Dietetics was an important part of medical practice in colonial days. Much of the teaching then about the value of diet in health and disease was provided by pithy statements, based on empiricism backed by authority, by which the science of medicine was taught to students, and by which health instruction was offered to the public. The experimental method of studying "Nature," promulgated by Francis Bacon, was just beginning to be employed in studies of nutrition. Delay in accepting experimental results, such as Lind's demonstration of the value of citrus fruits in the treatment of scurvy, may be attributed in part to a lack of understanding of the experimental method. In part, it may have been due to the absence of animal experimental methods that are capable of providing clear-cut and convincing evidence. Three of the greatest experimental scientists of the eighteenth century--Lavoisier, Count Rumford, and Benjamin Franklin--busied themselves with matters of concern to dietitians and home economists. Their work and that of others provided a firm foundation for the advances in scientific knowledge during the last two hundred years.
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PMID:Nutrition research and education in the Age of Franklin. A Bicentennial study. 110 97

It is known that plague epidemics and pandemics spread both by sea and by land. However, in the 16th century an entire "hidden face" of the continent was discovered and opened thanks to the Portuguese. It is noteworthy that just as Francis I or the Dutch, Yersinia pestis did not respect the longitudinal limits set out by the treaties of Tordessillas and Saragossa. Even before the arrival of Vasco de Gama in Goa and all the way to the settling of the Moluques in Macao, Canton and Kagoshima, one can follow the progression of at least ten or so epidemics against a general epidemic back drop, thanks especially to the works of Jose de Vasconcellos e Menezes as well as some others. Scurvy was, as far as plague was concerned, a regulating factor, at least to a certain extent.
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PMID:[16th century: suffering and disease on the way to great discoveries; from Lisbon to the Moluccas and to Japan]. 1100 Sep 48