Scurvy – Historical Background and Prevention

[CharlesHarris]

[Jonas]

A large bottle of 500mg Vitamin C tablets should be part of everyone's preps...

[Scythe13]

Pine needle tea, and lots of it. Yummy and anti-scurvy.

[Highlander]

No excuse for Scurvy in this day and age,..... but both the Pine needle tea, and the vitamins are good

[David075]

If I recall right this was the reason lime cordial was invented , the sailors could have the benefits of lime in there diet long after the fruit had gone off.

[Sunna]

do the needles from all uk pine trees work ? , even the common one in almost every back garden .

good read thanks

[Highlander]

do the needles from all uk pine trees work ? , even the common one in almost every back garden .

good read thanks

yes

[CharlesHarris]

[Scythe13]

Got back earlier from walking the dogs with the wife. Today's tree that she learned about, and I learned more about was the good old Elm. While walking we saw a beast of a Hawthor! I commented that mum used to say the red fruits were poisonous. She seemed to agree with my mum on this. When we got home, I got one of my books out and gloated over my correctness. But then felt embarrassed that I'd forgotten something so well worth knowing! As you've already figured out this is a lovely story, it's in the scurvy section, so there must be a connection.

Hawthorn fruit has 7x the Vitamin C of oranges. So that pretty much means having 3-5 berries a day will stop scurvy.

[MaryN]

Hawthorn certainly is not poisonous - eating a few too many berries might give you an upset stomach - but it can be used in jams and jellies (great to go with cold meats). Did you know it has uses for the treatment of certain heart conditions?