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[...] Steve Wozniak [75th birthday]: "I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for" (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 3 points 1 year ago* (9 children)

oh they failed for a whole myriad of reasons, but scurvy was one of them.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    This blog doesn't support your claim at all.

    This time Scott made sure to provide his men with fresh seal meat, and scurvy was not a problem in the main camp.

    One of Scott's goals for the winter journey had been to determine the proper ration for sledging up on the Polar plateau, where the men would have to hike for several weeks at altitudes above 10,000 feet. After some tinkering with proportions, the men on the Winter Journey had settled on a satisfying ration, and Scott decided to adopt it unchanged for his own trip later that year: Scott's Polar ration: 450g biscuit, 340 grams pemmican, 85g sugar, 57g butter, 24g tea, 16g cocoa. This ration contains about 4500 calories (sledging requires 6500) and no vitamin C.

    You said they brought 'tonnes of limes' and got scurvy despite that.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    in my defense it was primarily supposed to be a fun fact about limes and steam ships.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    No, I know, that's what I'm curious about, haha. I think the expedition is a red herring here.

    For all my searching, I can only turn up sources that say limes are less effective than lemons, and lemons are less effective than oranges, and all citrus is less effective than fresh mammal meat, particularly liver. I can find sources that say the vitamin c breaks down when heated, so the navy's switch from fresh limes to canned lime juice made things worse around the age of the steam ship.

    I cannot find sources that say limes don't work to prevent scurvy, and was wondering if you did.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    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

    1. lime juice is about 25% as effective as lemon juice at preventing scurvy, when fresh, and
    2. 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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    as i read it it wasn't immune, it just took longer.

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