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James Lind (4 October 1716 – 13 July 1794) was a Scottish physician. He was a pioneer of naval hygiene in the Royal Navy. By conducting one of the first ever , he developed the theory that citrus fruits cured scurvy. Lind served in the Royal Navy and then went onto private practice. In 1758 he appointed chief physician of the Royal Naval Hospital Haslar, then one of the largest hospitals in the world. While chief physician, Lind argued for the health benefits of better ventilation aboard naval ships, the improved cleanliness of sailors' bodies, clothing and bedding, and below-deck fumigation with sulphur and arsenic. He also proposed that fresh water could be obtained by distillation sea water. He retired in 1783 and was awarded a large pension by the naval commissioners. Lind made significant advancements in naval medicine that advanced the practice of preventive medicine and improved human understanding of nutrition.
In December 1731 he began his medical studies as an apprentice of George Langlands, a fellow of the Incorporation of Surgeons which preceded the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. His duties as apprentice including mixing chemicals and basic medicines, cleaning and general chores, dressing wounds and bleeding lesser patients.
By 1747 he had become surgeon of in the Channel Fleet, and had decided to conduct an experiment on the prevention and treatment of scurvy while that ship was patrolling the Bay of Biscay. This was carried out from 20 May 1747 with twelve patients and the application of dietary supplements, that varied by subgroup, including consumption of citrus fruits, herbs, pastes, cider vinegar and other treatments, with those having consumed the citrus fruits the best treated. Shortly after his first scurvy experiment in 1748, Lind retired from active sea service with the Navy.
In the summer of 1758, he was appointed chief physician of the Royal Naval Hospital Haslar at Gosport. The hospital was purpose built to be the primary medical facility for the Royal Navy and had opened officially just over four years earlier, with Lind appointed to as the second holder of the chief physician's post. It is believed that Lord Anson had directly sponsored him for the role and it came with a salary of 200 pounds a year. The position was largely administrative in nature and involved overall responsibility for on average 1,500 patients on the site on a given day. Lind reported directly to the Sick and Hurt Board Commissioners of the Admiralty. In his first two years as chief physician, Lind record 5,735 patients in the hospital, with 1,146 showing signs of scurvy which he ordered treated, conducting research and testing effective remedies while in his role. Lind was able to use his time at Haslar to produce new editions of his great works on scurvy, naval hygiene and tropical medicine.
Lind retired in 1783 and was awarded a large pension by the naval commissioners, with it being recorded this was an unusual arrangement but commensurate with his long medical service. His son John succeeded him as chief physician. In 1783, alongside his cousin, he was one of the founding members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
John (1751–1794), his elder son, studied medicine at St Andrews University and graduated in 1777, then succeeded his father as chief physician at Haslar Hospital in 1783. James (1765–1823), also embarked on a career with the British navy. His cousin was James Lind (1736–1812).
James rose to the rank of post-captain, and was notable for his role in the Battle of Vizagapatam in the Bay of Bengal in 1804, for which he was knighted.
Since antiquity in some parts of the world, and since the 17th century in England, it had been known that citrus fruit had an antiscorbutic effect. John Woodall (1570–1643), an English military surgeon of the British East India Company recommended themRogers, Everett M. (1995). Diffusion of Innovations. New York, NY: The Free Press. . Page 7. but their use did not become widespread. John Fryer (1650–1733) too noted in 1698 the value of citrus fruits in curing sailors of scurvy. Although Lind was not the first to suggest citrus as a cure for scurvy, he was the first to study its effect by a systematic experiment in 1747.Carlisle, Rodney (2004). Scientific American Inventions and Discoveries, John Wiley & Songs, Inc., New Jersey. p. 393. . It was one of the first reported, controlled, clinical experiments in history, particularly because of its use of control groups.
Lind thought that scurvy was due to putrefaction of the body that could be helped by , so he included an acidic dietary supplement in the experiment. This began after two months at sea when the ship was afflicted with scurvy. He divided twelve scorbutic sailors into six groups of two. They all received the same diet, but in addition group one was given a quart of cider daily, group two twenty-five drops of elixir of vitriol (sulfuric acid), group three six spoonfuls of vinegar, group four half a pint of seawater, group five two oranges and one lemon, and the last group a spicy paste plus a drink of barley water. The treatment of group five stopped after six days when they ran out of fruit, but by that time one sailor was fit for duty while the other had almost recovered. Apart from that, only group one showed any effect from its treatment.
In 1753, he published A treatise of the scurvy,; (2nd ed., 1757); (3rd ed. 1772) that was mostly ignored. When James Cook went on his first voyage he carried wort (0.1 mg vitamin C per 100 g), sauerkraut (10–15 mg per 100 g) and a syrup, or "rob", of oranges and lemons (the juice contains 40–60 mg of vitamin C per 100 g) as antiscorbutics, but only the results of the trials on wort were published. In 1762 Lind's second publication appeared, being an Essay on the most effectual means of preserving the health of seamen appeared. In it he recommended growing salad—i.e. watercress (43 mg vitamin C per 100 g)—on wet blankets. This was put into practice, and in the winter of 1775 the British Army in North America was supplied with mustard and cress seeds. However Lind, like most of the medical profession, believed that scurvy came from ill-digested and putrefying food within the body, bad water, excessive work, and living in a damp atmosphere that prevented healthful perspiration. Thus, while he recognised the benefits of citrus fruit (although he weakened the effect by switching to a boiled concentrate or "rob", in which the boiling process destroys vitamin C), he never advocated citrus juice as a single solution. He believed that scurvy had multiple causes which therefore required multiple remedies.
The medical establishment ashore continued to believe that scurvy was a disease of putrefaction, curable by the administration of elixir of vitriol, infusions of wort and other remedies designed to 'ginger up' the system. It could not account for the effect of citrus fruits and so dismissed the evidence of them as unproven and anecdotal. In the Navy however, experience had convinced many officers and surgeons that citrus juices provided the answer to scurvy, even if the reason was unknown. Gilbert Blane and Thomas Trotter also naval physicians expanded on Lind's research, advocating for the need for citrus fruits and vegetables to be issued to ship's crew. On the insistence of senior officers, led by Rear Admiral Alan Gardner in 1794, lemon juice was issued on board the Suffolk on a twenty-three-week, non-stop voyage to India. The daily ration of two-thirds of an ounce mixed in grog contained just about the minimum daily intake of 10 mg vitamin C. There was no serious outbreak of scurvy. This resulted in widespread demand for lemon juice, backed by the Sick and Hurt Board whose numbers had recently been augmented by two practical naval surgeons who knew of Lind's experiments with citrus. The following year, the Admiralty accepted the Board's recommendation that lemon juice be issued routinely to the whole fleet. Another Scot, Archibald Menzies, brought citrus plants to Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii on the Vancouver Expedition, to help the Navy re-supply in the Pacific. This was not the end of scurvy in the Navy, as lemon juice was at first in such short supply that it could only be used in home waters under the direction of surgeons, rather than as a preventative. Only after 1800 did the supply increase so that, at the insistence of Admiral Lord St Vincent, it began to be issued generally.Macdonald, Janet (2006). Feeding Nelson's Navy. The True Story of Food at Sea in the Georgian Era. Chatham, London. , pp. 154–166.
The James Lind Alliance is named after him.
The James Lind Library is a not-for-profit, open-access electronic library on medical treatment, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
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