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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   3079 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 4, 2022

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Decay seems to depend on everything, heat, pH, sunlight, oxygen, etc. Seems almost amazing that vitamin C exists at all.

Skyforger's summary is correct; if you're curious about how the cure for scurvy got "undiscovered," this blogpost from some years back is fascinating reading.

arctic explorers kept getting scurvy, and the traditional citrus and so on didn't help as they pre-squeezed the juice before embarkment to preserve it, destroying the vitamin C over the next few weeks. So they concluded the whole 'citrus cures scurvy' thing was an old wives' tale and the disease must be due to some contamination of their food supplies, so they scrubbed and sanitized everything to no effect.

Fresh seal/dolphin/whale skin has some C in in though, so when they finally hunted fresh meat in desperation and the scurvy went away, they concluded it must just be a really damn stubborn contamination in their meat supply making them sick. Interesting example of a clearly-effective discovery being 'undiscovered.'

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