July 1, 2012, 8pm-10pm: Speakeasy Dollhouse: Solving Murders With Diorama Crime Scenes

A lecture and workshop with the creator of the Speakeasy Dollhouse book series and off-Broadway immersive play.

Artist and author Cynthia von Buhler’s Italian immigrant grandparents, Frank and Mary Spano, owned two speakeasies in the Bronx during Prohibition. In 1935, shortly after Prohibition ended, Frank Spano was shot and killed on the street in Manhattan. When she began her search two years ago nothing was known about the killer, his motive, or a trial. At the time of Frank Spano’s death, innumerable murders went unsolved because evidence was mishandled or downright ignored. In 1936, as a means to better explore these cases and train investigators of sudden or violent deaths to assess visual evidence, Frances Glessner Lee created the Nutshell Studies. These studies consisted of detailed, 1:12 scale dollhouse models that students could examine from every angle. Taking inspiration from the Nutshell Studies, von Buhler created the scenes from her grandfather’s murder and the events leading up to it using her own handmade sets and dolls. Utilizing evidence gathered from autopsy reports, police records, court documents, and interviews in tandem with the dolls and sets, she has pieced together a probable scenario. In this workshop von Buhler will display dollhouse murder dioramas based on actual crimes (including that of her grandfather) for participants to solve. The best sleuth will receive a copy of von Buhler’s book Speakeasy Dollhouse, The Bloody Beginning, an evidence booklet, and two tickets to see the immersive play based upon her findings.

Von Buhler's paintings have been displayed in numerous galleries and museums around the world. Her work has been reproduced and featured in books, magazines, and newspapers from TIME to The New Yorker. Her interactive sculptures have appeared on Law & Order, Special Victims Unit, where murders were recreated to mimic her art. Von Buhler has published two children’s books with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, The Cat Who Wouldn't Come Inside and But Who Will Bell the Cats? Both books feature detailed handmade architectural sets and characters created and photographed by von Buhler. Evelyn Evelyn, A Tragic Tale in Two Tomes (Dark Horse Comics), a graphic novel about conjoined twins, was written by Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley and illustrated by von Buhler. The afterword was written by Neil Gaiman. Von Buhler’s Speakeasy Dollhouse play was filmed for an episode of The Science Channel’s show Oddities. Of Dolls & Murder, directed by Susan Marks and narrated by John Waters, is a documentary about Francis Glessner Lee’s crime scene investigation dollhouse dioramas. Marks is currently working on a Of Dolls & Murder sequel based on Speakeasy Dollhouse. For more information, go to cynthiavonbuhler.com or speakeasydollhouse.com.

Details:
This is part of the “Atlas Obscura Speakers” series of talks at Observatory, 543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215. 543 Union Street is the large red brick building on right. Go right on Nevins and left down the alley through large black gates. Gallery is the second door on the left. Enter Observatory via Proteus Gowanus Gallery.

The Obscura Society is the real world exploration arm of Atlas Obscura seeking out the secret histories, unusual access, and opportunities to explore strange and overlooked places hidden all around us.

More adventures coming soon - join one of our local announcements list to be the first to find out about our next outing near you

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June 19, 2012, 7:30pm-9:30pm: Join urban explorer and historian, Steve Duncan, for an illustrated lecture on "The Lost Streams and 19th-Century Sewer Tunnels Beneath Brooklyn."

From ancient underground rivers and forgotten quarry tunnels to modern sewers and utility networks, the underground layers of the world's great cities are full of places that are usually unseen, but that reveal the city's history in new and startling ways. These hidden layers of the urban environment can teach us about how cities grow and function, and can provide a new perspective that highlights the ways that our daily experience in any city shapes-- and is shaped by-- the built environment around us.

For urban explorers, the quest to see and experience these places turns the great cities of the world into playgrounds of epic scale and drama, and shows that learning about history never has to be boring. Join photographer and historian Steve Duncan as he shares slides and stories of exploring sewers and storm drains in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and other cities-- and learn why cities that forget the past are doomed, sooner to later, to find it flooding their basements.

Steve Duncan is an urban historian and an explorer and photographer of the urban underground. He has photographed sewers and underground rivers in cities from Antwerp to Yangon (but he's still working on exploring in a city that begins with "z"), with particular focus on the underground hydrological and wastewater infrastructure of New York City, Los Angeles, Paris, and London. He has hosted a Discovery Channel show on urban archeology and has appeared on the History Channel and others as an expert on New York's underground spaces. He received his MA in urban history and is currently working on his PhD in urban geography. For more information, go to undercity.org.

Details:
This is the second of the “Atlas Obscura Speakers” series of talks at Observatory, 543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215. 543 Union Street is the large red brick building on right. Go right on Nevins and left down the alley through large black gates. Gallery is the second door on the left. Enter Observatory via Proteus Gowanus Gallery.

The Obscura Society is the real world exploration arm of Atlas Obscura seeking out the secret histories, unusual access, and opportunities to explore strange and overlooked places hidden all around us.

More adventures coming soon - join one of our local announcements list to be the first to find out about our next outing near you

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June 23, 2012, 10am-1pm: Join Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman for an intense exploration of Newtown Creek's Dutch Kills tributary.

Found less than one mile from the East River, Dutch Kills is home to four movable (and one fixed span) bridges, including one of only two retractible bridges remaining in New York City. Dutch Kills is considered to be the central artery of industrial Long Island City and is ringed with enormous factory buildings, titan rail yards -- it's where the industrial revolution actually happened. Bring your camera, as the tour will be revealing an incredible landscape along this section of the troubled Newtown Creek Watershed.

Details/special instructions:

• Meet at the Albert E. Short Triangle Park Corner of Jackson Avenue and 23rd Street Long Island City, New York. This is the Court Square MTA station, and served by the 7, G, and M lines. Additionally, the Q39 and B62 buses have nearby stops. Check MTA.info as ongoing construction at Queens Plaza often causes delays and interruptions.
• Be prepared: We'll be encountering broken pavement, sometimes heavy truck traffic, and moving through a virtual urban desert as we cross the currently undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens. Dress and pack appropriately for hiking, closed tow shoes are highly recommended.
• Bathroom opportunities will be found only at the start of the walk, which will be around three hours long and cover approximately three miles of ground.

The Obscura Society is the real world exploration arm of Atlas Obscura seeking out the secret histories, unusual access, and opportunities to explore strange and overlooked places hidden all around us.

More adventures coming soon - join one of our local announcements list to be the first to find out about our next outing near you

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June 2, 2012: Join LA Field Agent Matt Blitz for an exploration of one of the most unusual cemeteries in the United States.

This fantastic full day of cemetery touring has something for everyone. Enjoy outlandish religious imagery? Check! Love forced patriotism? Check! Obsessed with Hollywood celebrities? Check! Have a morbid curiosity for grave hunting? Double Check!

Within this beautiful 300 acre park, there resides a complete replica collection of Michelangelo statues, dozens of beautiful stained glass windows (two of which have a multi-media presentations), a mosaic of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, several bronze statues of American icons George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, all while being the final resting place for over 250,000 people, including more celebrities than anywhere else in the world. Walt Disney, Jimmy Stewart, Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, Clark Gable, and George Burns are all immortalized here.

• 9:15 am to 12 pm - Forest Lawn Glendale.  
• 12 pm-1 pm - Lunch at local hot spot Tam O' Shanter for beers and sandwiches (or Hugo's Tacos or other)
• 1:30 pm to 4:00 pm - Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills

Meeting Place: Please meet at 9am at front gate.

Addresses:

• Forest Lawn Glendale: 1712 South Glendale Avenue Glendale, CA 91205
• Tam O'Shanter's: 2980 Los Feliz Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA
• Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills: 6300 Forest Lawn Drive Los Angeles, CA 9006

The Obscura Society is the real world exploration arm of Atlas Obscura seeking out the secret histories, unusual access, and opportunities to explore strange and overlooked places hidden all around us.

More adventures coming soon - join one of our local announcements list to be the first to find out about our next outing near you

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Join us June 8, 2012 at 7:30pm at Observatory for Tom Stathes Cartoon Carnival #10: Made in NYC

New York City was the birthplace of American cinema with the earliest animated films created in the 1910s. This edition of The Tom Stathes Cartoon Carnival features selections of early and wacky animated cartoons created right here in New York City. Tom’s show, comprising oddities from the 1910s through 1940s, is presented in 16mm form with a projector–the technology serving as part of the spectacle–in order to demonstrate how film was meant to be enjoyed. Cinephiles, cartoon and comic fans and lovers of all things vintage are sure to enjoy a Cartoon Carnival!

Please keep in mind films of an early vintage tend to contain politically incorrect themes. Themes in the films do not reflect the sentiments of the exhibitor or the host venue. Due to the age and fragile nature of antique film prints, there may be momentary technical difficulties during the screening. 

Tom Stathes is a Cartoon Cryptozoologist, with a rare film print collection comprised of over 1,000 shorts. His archive consists of everything from Felix the Cat and Farmer Alfalfa to silent reels from Bray Studios and Out of the Inkwell. A native-New Yorker, he turned his passion for the city’s animation legacy into a preservation mission. With his Bray Animation Project, he has worked with several film and comic historians to document the studios invaluable output. For more information go to cartoonsonfilm.com or brayanimation.weebly.com.

Details:
Observatory is located at 543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215. 543 Union Street is the large red brick building on right. Go right on Nevins and left down alley through large black gates. Gallery is the second door on the left. Enter Observatory via Proteus Gowanus Gallery.

Armchair travel can transport us to far-flung places, wondrous locales, and destinations that inspire our imagination. Sometimes however, this wanderlust must be quenched even if round-the-world travel is out of reach. This feeling, and the fact that our hometowns are abundant in curiosity, was the impetus behind our first Obscura Day back in 2010. 

Two-weeks ago we produced our third Obscura Day and were thrilled with how it went down. Naturally, in the lead up, the Atlas team yearned to partake in as many of the amazing events and adventures across the globe as possible. But since we couldn't be everywhere at once, we had to choose a handful.

I decided to head out to Los Angeles for two events in particular, special, hands-on access to the incomparable bird specimen collection at the Moore Laboratory of Zoology (MLZ) and the first-ever exhibition of Paleofuturist Matt Novak's private collection of retrofuturism art and ephemera in partnership with BBC Future. 

For the sake of relative brevity, I think I'll make this a two-part post. I'll start with my Obscura Day morning. 

--

On April 28th, I woke up on the west side of LA, grabbed my gear and headed due east to Occidental College where I joined about a dozen other people for a hands-on tour of beautiful, dead birds. Lots of them. I mean drawers upon drawers FULL of them. 

A selection of tanagers

We examined countless specimens, from tanagers to monkey eating raptors. 

 Harpy Eagle (front), a monkey-eating raptor from lowland tropical rainforest in the Americas, and a Golden Eagle (back)

The event was hosted by MLZ Director and Curator, John McCormack who led two, 1 1/2 hour tours of his fascinating lab.  

John McCormack shows off a specimen of the sword-billed hummingbird, the only bird known to have a bill longer than the rest of its body

I caught up with John after it was all said and done and asked him about the origins of MLZ and what their research aims to achieve:

"Moore houses the largest Mexican bird collection in the world (over 60,000 specimens) and has large collections from Ecuador, Honduras, and Costa Rica. The specimens in the MLZ are an incredibly important research collection describing the biodiversity of tropical Latin America. Biologists study these specimens to better understand and describe what species exist, as well as the processes and Earth history events that led to the generation of these species over millions of years. This knowledge helps us protect the living populations that these specimens represent. Technological advances also allow researchers to extract DNA directly from the specimens, which provides a genomic perspective on their evolutionary history. The mission of the MLZ is to unite cutting-edge science with museum collections to more fully understand and protect the living museum of biodiversity that exists on Earth."

Chester C. Lamb, who collected most of the birds in the MLZ collection for Robert T. Moore

You knew the event was a success about five minutes in, when the group gave an enormous, collective "WOWWWWW!," as John pulled out the first drawer. 

Representatives from many of the world’s bird families including cranes, herons, a flamingo, and a spoonbill

The event was made for photogeeks. 

Bay-headed Tanager

Bay-headed Tanagers

Five specimens of the extinct Imperial Woodpecker, what was the largest woodpecker in the world found in pine forests of the Western Sierra Madre

John McCormack shows off the amazing plumage of the Fiery Topaz

American Kestrel

A selection of brilliantly-colored tanagers

A selection of archaic curiosities from the Moore Lab cabinets

An aracari, a small form of toucan

A tray of hummingbirds, including the sickle-billed hummingbird (left)

We've spoke with John and it looks like more hands-on tours at Moore Lab are forthcoming. Keep on eye on additional Obscura Society expeditions to MLZ later this year.

I'd recommend joining our mailing list or giving us a follow on Facebook and Twitter to learn more. 

For information on MLZ, contact John McCormack at mccormack@oxy.edu or on Twitter @LAevolving.

Keep your eye out for Part Two of my Obscura Day in LA with BBC Future and the Paleofuturist Matt Novak.

OBSCURA DAY IN NEW YORK, 2012 EDITION: 

Here's to New York on Obscura Day! We wandered the streets of Gramercy, learning of Oscar Wilde's old haunts. We drank where George Washington once kicked up his feet and had a pint in Lower Manhattan. We lurked in catacombs. We wandered forgotten beaches, stepping over dolls heads half-swallowed by the sand. We took photographs of New York's amazing street art. We explored the shelves of books on magic. We walked in the footsteps of the occult. We looked for edible plants in Central Park. Here are some images and quotes to give you a sampling of what New York experienced that day:

Victorian Gentleman Enjoys a Manhattan -- Delmonico's Bar 

 Photo by Juan Monroy

 "Despite having lived in New York for over a decade, I had never been in these spots… " Obscura Day at the 19th Century Pub Crawl

 Exploring Industrial Ruins-- Long Island City

Photo by Juan Monroy

"The walking tour of Newtown Creek… was led by a true expert of the area… It was an eye-opening perspective." -- Obscura Day at Dutch Kills 

 Enjoying the stacks-- Conjuring Arts Center

Photo by Matt Downs

"Checking out this magical library! - Obscura Day at Conjuring Arts Center

Exploring Ruins-- Staten Island

Photo by We Heart New York

"For this year's Obscura Day, we once again joined the folks at Underwater New York, this time heading to Staten Island, where we clambered amidst the remains of the St. John's Guild Children's Hospital and gazed in sad wonder at the decaying bungalows of the Cedar Grove Beach Club, whose residents were evicted in 2010." --Obscura day at Forgotten Beaches

Learning about historic New York disasters and exploring the catacombs-- Green-Wood Cemetery 

 Photo by Allison C. Meier

Learning what to eat and not to eat-- Central Park 

 Photo by E. Mueller

 "This plant is beautiful and deadly, like my ex-girlfriend" - Obscura Day at Urban Foraging 

Photograhing street art-- Downtown New York

Photo by Passport Addict 

 "I had a great time during the tour, and I got that much more acquainted with my camera, downtown New York City, street art, and photography in general.  All in all, I definitely can’t wait for Obscura Day 2013!" -Obscura Day at New York Street Photography Workshop

Disasters of New York: Green-Wood Cemetery Walk with Allison Meier

On June 9, 2012, join Atlas Obscura's resident cemetery afficionado, Allison Meier, for an exploration of monuments to New York's notable tragedies.

Established in 1838, Green-Wood Cemetery is known as the most beautiful rural cemetery in New York City, with rolling hills carved by an ancient glacier, a rogue flock of green parrots that nests in the spires of the entrance gate, and statuary created by the most notable artists of the 19th and early 20th century. It also contains memorials to the catastrophic Brooklyn Theater Fire of 1876, the Malbone Street train crash that claimed 93 victims, the 1840 burning of the Lexington steamship, the recent, but almost forgotten, 1960 Park Slope Plane Crash, and more ghastly incidents of disaster. This exploration will take us to these sites and more in Brooklyn's city of the dead.

Tickets are 15$ and a portion of the proceeds goes to support the Green-Wood Historic Fund.

The tour will last from 1pm-3pm.

Meeting Place: Green-Wood Cemetery's main entrance at Fifth Avenue and 25th street

More adventures coming soon - join one of our local announcements list to be the first to find out about our next outing near you

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Well done, everyone. As we recover from Obscura Day 2012, we are thrilled to see stories and amazing images from Obscura Day adventures across the country and around the world starting to pour in. Including everything from tales of exploding sporrans to close up encounters with mummies and extinct bird specimens, or exploring the (real!!) tunnels under Alcatraz, we give you:

OBSCURA DAY STORIES, 2012 EDITION

The Hidden Beauty of an Abandoned Prison - Philadelphia

Photo by Dawn Haggerty 

"We had a terrific tour guide, putting up with with the small group of us with tripods and other such equipment trailing behind to get our shots sans bodies. Funny thing is, one of the tripod gang I was able to recognize as one of the members of an online urbex group of which I belong – one whom I had wanted to meet!" - Obscura Day at Eastern State Pen

It Tastes Like Salt & Death: Licking the Mummy at Obscura Day's Cabaret in Toronto

Source

"Alright, so you’re gonna be hearing some crazy rumors about me licking a mummy. And by, crazy rumors,' I mean, 'okay, yeah, that happened.'" - Obscura Day Sideshow Fun

Monkey Eating Eagles & Bird's Nests in Cereal Boxes

Photo source

"Some of the specimens date back to the late 1800's, a time when there were not so many regulations on collecting specimens... Yes, that's an old cornflake box. A Mexican cornflake box to be exact. Back in the day the ornithologists would use any container they could. Is it bad that this box was my favorite 'specimen?'" -  A Bird in the Hand... Obscura Day at the Moore Laboratory of Zoology

Images and Advertisements from a Future that Never Was - Los Angeles

"The latest revolution in machinery is always handing off the baton to something better. It’s sort of how technology works. And we can barely keep up. We’re always trying to outpace ourselves, predicting what will be needed." - Paleofuture: Ghosts of Technology Past

Into the Grottos beneath the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver

Photo courtesy of  http://vancouverisawesome.com

"Obscura Day was this past Saturday and the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden opened up the caves in Ting Mountain to the public for the first time... It’s hard to describe the beauty of the caves and the feeling you have when entering a place very few people ever have." -  Exploring the Grotto Beneath Ting Mountain

Rare Books and Odd Ephemera - Miami Beach, Florida

Source

"One such hidden wonder in the library collection includes Philips’ Planisphere, a mechanical work designed to reveal all the constellations visible in the sky on any given night of the year—something that today can only be appreciated here in South Florida in the heart of the Everglades as so many of the stars have become obscured by artificial city light." - Obscure Objects in the Wolfsonian Museum Collection

Exploding Sporrans & Anotomical Oddities - Obscura Day in Edinburgh

Source

"...And the highlight of the tour had to be the exploding sporran! Apparently if you try to open it using the wrong knob, it fires 4 wee pistols out to the sides!"  - Obscurities in Edinburgh

Stalking Street Art in New York City

Source

"...I found one open option that really piqued my curiosity: a street art photography workshop led by Saddleshoe Tours of the city’s Bowery, Lower East Side, and Soho neighborhoods. I brushed off my camera (still a touch gritty with dust from the Masai Mara and the Serengeti), charged the battery, deleted some of my older photos from the memory card, and headed out." - Street Art Photography Workshop

WE WANT MORE

Please share your videos, pictures, and links with us
Stop by the official 2012 Obscura Day Flickr Pool to check out the terrific images already there & share your photos from the day's adventures: Obscura Day Flickr Pool

If you took great photos, video or wrote about your Obscura Day, we'd like to hear about it - you can email us at info@atlasobscura.com

THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS THE BEST OBSCURA DAY YET

We want to thank all of you for joining us in creating this day of local explorations that continues to surprise and delight us with the unusual places it uncovers, the incredible images and stories you've shared with us, and the growing community of curious minded folks that we have the ongoing pleasure of meeting and exploring with each year. You guys are the best. Seriously.

We hope you'll join us next year for Obscura Day or for an Obscura Society event near you
 

Identified by Hippocrates and by the Egyptians as early as 1550 BC, Scurvy was originally a relatively rare and mysterious ailment which struck on land during long campaigns and overland journeys when fresh provisions failed.

Caused by a lack of Vitamin C in the diet, with the notable exception of humans and the guinea pig, most plant and animal species synthesize vitamin C, and do not require it in the diet. But we do. Which, as it turns out, is a real problem.

But let's begin at the beginning, and meet that strange beast known as...

“Land Scurvy:” Curse of the Crusaders!

Dec 1217 - While the Crusaders trudged through in Egypt: “..Soldiers with violent pains in the feet and ankles, their gums became swollen, their teeth loose and useless, while their hips and shin bones first turn black and putrefied. Finally, an easy and peaceful death, like a gentle sleep, put an end to their suffering.”

Later between 1249 and 1254, while Jean de Joinville traveled with the 7th Crusade he wrote: “the disorder I spoke of very soon increased so much in the army that the barbers were forced to cut away very large pieces of flesh from the gums to enable their patients to eat..”

But while the "land scurvy" of the crusades was bad, Scurvy's true golden age was about to begin...

“Purpura Nautica:” An Age of Discovery... and not all of them good.

Scurvy, once rare, flourished with the advent of long sea voyages of trade, discovery & conquest. Scurvy takes approximately 6 weeks to set it, and on month long voyages, it struck down entire crews. There are stories of Spanish galleons found floating, staffed only by the dead. The disease was nicknamed “purpura nautica” for the purplish bruises that served as the first indication of the disease. An estimated 2 million sailors died of scurvy between 1500-1800.

Among those lose to scurvy were Vasco de Gama in 1499 claiming 116 to 170 men. In 1520, Magellan’s round the world journey was wracked by scurvy, claiming most of the men not left to fend for themselves on a distant shore or killed by natives in the final battle. His voyage returned with only 18 out of the 230 men who originally set sail. Score one for scurvy.

This of course, was a big problem. No just for the sailors but for the monarchs who were bankrolling them. Exploration is expensive, and governments, militaries and individual physicians began exploring the possible causes and cures. Luckily as early as 1593, Admiral Richad Hawkins recommended the use of citrus as an preventative measure! Score one for sailors!

In 1614, The East India Company published a pamphlet titled “The Surgeon’s Mate” which also prescribed fresh food, citrus.... and sulphuric acid. By the early 1700s saw a general increase in the knowledge that fresh foods & citrus... or possibly acids, helped the situation, but the specific cause was still a mystery and hotly contested.

In 1747 the Scottish physician James Lind conducted what is widely considered to be the first example of a clinical trial wherein he tested alleged cures on 12 scurvy-ridden sailors. They were divided into teams of two and each given a course of one of the following :

• cider  • sulphuric acid  • vinegar  • seawater  • oranges & lemons   • spices and barley water

The ambitious program was cut a bit short when they ran out of fruit in just 6 days, but by then the indications of success were clear for Team Orange/lemon. Less so for Team Seawater and Team Sulphuric Acid.

Lind published his findings in 1753 in “A Treatise on Scurvy”, but died before he could see his advice widely adopted. Following this discovery, the British military slowly began to invest in antiscorbutics. James Cook packed watercress seeds for his second epic voyage of 1772-1775 and suffered virtually no scurvy. In 1794 the Suffolk administered rations of lemon juice and had no scurvy. This was no small thing: During the preceding century scurvy had caused more losses in the British navy than were suffered in ALL enemy action.

In 1953, the British Navy Surgeon & Vace Admiral Sir Sheldon Dudley said: “The application of Lind’s recommendations suddenly killed naval scurvy in 1795...intelligent naval senior executive officers asserted that this event was the aquivelent of doubling the fighting force of the navy... it is no idle fancy to assert that Lind, as much as Nelson, broke the power of Napoleon.” Success! No more scurvy forever...right?

Limey's: When it all started to go downhill:

The British establishment grasped onto the concept of citrus, and then did it really really wrong. First, they

substituted cheap and easy to get limes - readily available from British holdings in the Caribbean - for the more effective lemons or oranges. Then they further boiled the limes in copper vessels, which had the non-helpful side effect of reducing the (thus far unknown) Vitamin C content even further.

People began to suspect that maaaaybe this whole citrus thing was not as effective as it had been claimed. Of course by then steam engines in ships brought the age of sail and voyages of longer than 6 weeks to an end. Semi-success-via-roundabout-ways!

Of course, there was still a few very long sea voyages that those Victorians had left to make...

The Arctic: At least the blood freezes?

By the time the Race for the Poles began at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, scurvy became a deadly problem once more. Despite all of the work of previous generations, Arctic & Antarctic expeditions set out to the icy wasteland armed with poorly tinned food, pemmican, hard tack, tea and whiskey.

The complete failure of John Franklin’s ill-fated third arctic expedition in 1847 has been partially blamed on scurvy.

Robert F Scott’s 1903 and 1911 expeditions were both struck with the disease. His description: “The symptoms of scurvy do not necessarily occur in a regular order, but generally the first sign is an inflamed, swollen condition of the gums. The whitish pink tinge next the teeth is replaced by an angry red; as the disease gains ground the gums become more spongy and turn to a purplish colour, the teeth become loose and the gums sore. Spots appear on the legs, and pain is felt in old wounds and bruises; later, from a slight oedema, the legs, and then the arms, swell to a great size and become blackened behind the joints. After this the patient is soon incapacitated, and the last horrible stages of the disease set in, from which death is a merciful release.“

Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson noted that native Inuits did not suffer from scurvy, despite a lack of access to citrus and other similar known cures. It turned out that raw seal meat and blubber provide enough Vitamin C to prevent scurvy. A good day for arctic explorers.

VICTORY

It wasn't until 1927 that the cause and cure were finally discovered by Hungarian biochemist Szent-Györgyi (who won the 1937 Nobel Prize for Medicine), and the conclusive proof of ascorbic acid’s efficiency was not proven conclusively until 1932.

Modern Day

Now that the cause and cure are understood, and the cure readily available to most humans, scurvy should be firmly a thing of the past. But unfortunately it’s not - in inner cities and third world countries alike, scurvy continues to strike, particularly amongst poor children. Because scurvy is now so rare, and the effects in mild cases are confusable with other disorders, it is often misunderstood and ignored. More education and access to healthy foods for poor children is needed. 

But finally you must ask yourself this, is that really gum disease you have...or is it SCURVY!? 

Happy Scurvy Awareness Day! Go eat an orange.

Further Reading:

James Lind on BBC History - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/lind_james.shtml Scurvy

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy

Scott & Scurvy on Idelminds - http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm

Book: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail by Stephen Brown http://stephenrbown.net/scurvy1.htm

Edible Geography - http://www.ediblegeography.com/the-nutritional-impossibility-of-australia/