that’s why i linked the article! the bulk of it is about limes. they did animal testing in the 1920s (before the discovery of vitamin C) and found that
lime juice is about 25% as effective as lemon juice at preventing scurvy, when fresh, and
its efficacy was reduced by being in contact with a) air and b) copper, which means the open-face copper tanks used to store the stuff at sea was… not well thought out.
basically, as it was used by the british navy it was completely useless.
well i mean the fact that they used limes were also part of the problem, since lemon juice could actually handle those conditions. so everything else being equal they would have seen increased rates of scurvy, but the steam age saved them.
Could it handle those conditions? I was under the impression that all vitamin C degrades with exposure to heat, light, and air. I’m not seeing anything that suggests lemon juice is immune.
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that’s why i linked the article! the bulk of it is about limes. they did animal testing in the 1920s (before the discovery of vitamin C) and found that
basically, as it was used by the british navy it was completely useless.
Right. The problem is not that they used limes, it’s that they did a bunch of stuff to neuter the effectiveness of the limes.
well i mean the fact that they used limes were also part of the problem, since lemon juice could actually handle those conditions. so everything else being equal they would have seen increased rates of scurvy, but the steam age saved them.
Could it handle those conditions? I was under the impression that all vitamin C degrades with exposure to heat, light, and air. I’m not seeing anything that suggests lemon juice is immune.
as i read it it wasn’t immune, it just took longer.
I’m sorry, I probably should have linked what I was looking at earlier!
This suggests that limes and lemons do not degrade at a markedly different rate. Arguably, this is under modern refrigeration, and not the conditions on a 1900s era sailing ship, but I haven’t seen a source for that yet. I think your namesake is a bit cooler than you’re giving it credit for, haha.