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Public Health

Research one of the important public health figures such as James Lind, John Graunt, Benjamin Jesty, Ignas Semmelweiss and so on. Discuss what the field of public health what look like today without their contribution(s).

'Eat your veggies.' The need to eat fruits high in Vitamin C is one of the first lessons of good nutrition many children learn in grade school. Human beings are one of the few animals that cannot manufacture Vitamin C within their bodies and they need to ingest the vitamin from outside sources. Without consuming Vitamin C on a daily basis, human beings can develop scurvy, a debilitating health condition which causes a breakdown of connective tissue, including "loose teeth, bleeding gums and hemorrhages" (James Lind, 2011, BBC). Vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin, meaning that any excess Vitamin C is not stored within the body but excreted. This is in contrast to fat-soluble vitamins like Vitamin A Eating too much Vitamin A can actually be toxic, because it is stored up within the human system over time. However, Vitamin C, when consumed in excess, can cause diarrhea.

The need for regular Vitamin C consumption was first discovered in the 18th century by a Scottish physician named James Lind, based upon his work with the Royal Navy. Scurvy was a particularly common condition amongst sailors. We now known this is because sailors went for many months without sources of fresh fruits and vegetables. The epithet 'scurvy lad' was a common one directed at sailors. Lind used the scientific method to determine the cause of sailors' complaints. While on a ship, Lind selected twelve scurvy sufferers and created three groups of six men, each of which he treated with common remedies. "Some were given cider, others seawater, others a mixture of garlic, mustard and horseradish. Another group was given spoonfuls of vinegar, and the last group was fed oranges and lemons. Those fed citrus fruits experienced a remarkable recovery. While there was nothing new about his discovery -- the benefits of lime juice had been known for centuries [according to folk wisdom] -- Lind had definitively established the superiority of citrus fruits above all other 'remedies'" (James Lind, 2011, BBC). Although his work was initially ignored, gradually as a result of Lind's experiments, more and more ships took aboard lemon and lime juice. Because of these provisions, scurvy was eradicated as the scourge of British sailors. The epithet 'limey' also became a common insult lobbed at British seamen, because of their well-known consumption of limes.

Lind's pioneering work was to show systematically and empirically the problems with the food and water given to sailors (he also conducted experiments on the connections between the spread of typhus and infected water). Without Lind, the folk knowledge that citrus fruit could prevent scurvy would still have existed, but Lind demonstrated through an epidemiological study that eating citrus products could prevent and cure the disease better than other existing remedies. Since Lind, similar disease-eradication campaigns through nutrition have been conducted through outside authorities in the U.S., including fortifying grain-based products with thiamine to prevent beriberi, putting iodine in the salt supply to prevent goiter and thyroid-related complaints, and putting fluoride in the public water supply to prevent tooth decay.