History of Medicine

SCURVY and the GOLD RUSH

     On January 24, 1848, James Marshall, an employee of John Sutter, spotted gold in the American River bed. News leaked out quickly, setting off one of the great mass migrations of history. In the first year about 90-100,000 immigrants arrived, from all over the world, surging eventually to about a quarter of a million. Americans reached California by overland routes, by boat around Cape Horn, and across the Isthmus at Colombia, a part sea and part land odyssey.

     The overland journey from Missouri to California covered 1800 miles and took about six months to complete. Food storage was almost impossible and fresh fruit and vegetables difficult to obtain. Assorted diseases plagued the immigrants, including cholera, other diarrheas,  various fevers, and – importantly - scurvy.

     Fort Laramie in Wyoming was a stopping point on the trail. By August, 1850, almost 45,000 people had passed through to rest and buy supplies, which included canned or dried fruits (prevention of food spoilage using sealed cans or jars after cooking was discovered in 1810, long before the role of bacteria was appreciated). However, the Fort’s supplies were depleted and even the soldiers were scorbutic. Further on, immigrants crossed desert country in Utah and Nevada, moving up into Oregon or California. The scurvy rate rose with the distance, and claimed many victims. In southern Utah a town called Pickleville sprang up, selling pickles to the Argonauts to ward off the malady. Most people knew by this time that deprivation of fresh fruit and vegetables caused scurvy, though some felt that excess of salt in preserved meat was the culprit. 

From The Lectures of Bret Harte by C M Kozlay, 1909 (Internet Archives)

     Sailing around South America took up to six months. Fresh produce was available at Rio but going around the Horn or through the Straits of Magellan could take six weeks or more, followed by a stretch to Valparaiso. Scurvy was common on these routes. Those who went through the Isthmus were seldom affected since they could eat well on the land portion of the trip. 

From The Lectures of Bret Harte by C M Kozlay, 1909 (Internet Archives)

     Dr. Thomas M Logan, who sailed from New Orleans to California reported on scurvy in the miners. He described the hemorrhages around hair follicles that progressed to ecchymoses, the muscle and joint pains, fatigue, swollen and painful gums, and tendency of old scars or ulcers to break down again. Heavy physical labor seemed to precipitate symptoms. “Land scurvy” sufferers (i.e. the miners), as opposed to those with “ship scurvy”, often had diarrhea, though he attributed this to bad food or water. (James Lind had long ago said there was no difference between

James Lind (Wellcome Library)

land and sea scurvy). Logan went on to become the first secretary of the California State Board of Health, formed in 1870, and was president of the AMA in 1872. Physicians chasing after gold were surprisingly frequent, and those who wrote left similar descriptions.

     Scurvy was rife in the gold mining areas. The winters of 1848-9 and 49-50 were particularly rainy and roads from Sacramento, being rudimentary or nonexistent, were quagmires of mud. Getting winter provisions to the mines became almost impossible. The miners’ diet was reduced to bread, salted meat, and pork fat, and the physical labor hard. The wife of one of Sutter’s employees had planted some pear trees and the demand for the fruit was such that individual pears were sold before ripening, marked with tags carrying the purchaser’s name.    

     Scurvy, in fact, precipitated the formation of the town of Sonora. In the Sonora camp the 1849-50 winter brought so much scurvy that inhabitants, led by the alcalde, a butcher named Charles Dodge, decided to incorporate as a city to build a hospital for the care of scurvy victims. Money was raised by personal subscription and sale of vacant land. It was the first, and possibly the only, hospital to treat scurvy, and earned a nickname of the “California Haslar” (the Haslar Royal Hospital was the Naval Hospital where James Lind, 18^th century investigator of antiscorbutic agents, was physician). Most of the money went to purchasing limejuice, potatoes, canned fruit, and other items at vastly inflated prices, but to good effect.  

Stamp commemorating Gold Rush

     Mexicans were generally considered fairly resistant to scurvy due to their habit of eating raw onions, the outbreak in Sonora apparently being an exception. The Chinese and German camps saw less scurvy, the first allegedly because of eating undercooked vegetables and sprouting legumes, and the second because of the German fondness for potato salad.    

     Doctors profited from the plethora of diseases – scurvy, cholera, fevers, etc., partly by selling medicines themselves. For scurvy they sold pickles and other antiscorbutics at marked-up prices. Payment was in cash, gold, or provisions. Another treatment, apparently not rare, and not on medical advice, did not work so well: burial up to the neck in the ground. Since sailors had been cured after reaching land the idea was that being placed deep in “land” would cure rapidly. Quacks, of course, peddled many useless nostrums.

     The need for fruits and vegetables created new businesses. A young entrepreneur sailed to Tahiti in 1849 and brought back a load of potatoes, squashes, and fruits, including 46,000 oranges. After almost a two-month sail about half the produce was still edible and he still profited. Locally farmed potatoes and green vegetables showed up by 1851-2. Ranchers in southern California who had citrus trees for their own use sold fruit to the north and converted grazing land into orchards, creating a citrus industry that persists today.

     After 1850 “epidemics” of scurvy were gone, and only scattered cases appeared. Anthony Lorenz, who supplied most of the above information, estimates conservatively that 10,000 men died of scurvy or its sequelae in the first two years of the Gold Rush, more than those claimed by cholera. Tragically it was at a time when preventive measures were generally known.

SOURCES

Lorenz, A J. “Scurvy in the Gold Rush”. J Hist Med 1957, 12: 473-510.

Lorenz, A J. “The Conquest of Scurvy”. J Amer Dietetic Assoc 1954, 30:   

      665-70.

Logan, T M. “Land Scurvy: Its Pathology, Causes, Symptoms, and

     Treatment”. Southern Med Reports 1851, 2: 468-80.

Carpenter, K J. The History of Scurvy and Vitamin C. 1986. Cambridge

      Univ Press.

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