James Lind's Scurvy Cure Experiment of 1747

James Lind's Scurvy Cure Experiment of 1747 was a multi-arm parallel block randomized experiment to determine a causal connection between diets and a scurvy cure (of scurvy) performed by James Lind in 1747.

• Context:
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • Louis Pasteur's Spontaneous Generation Disproof Experiment of 1859.
  • Gregor Mendel's Plant Hybridization Experiments.
• See: Clinical Study.

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References

2013

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designed_experiment#Controlled_experimentation_on_scurvy
  • In 1747, while serving as surgeon on HMS Salisbury, James Lind carried out a controlled experiment to develop a cure for scurvy.

    Lind selected 12 men from the ship, all suffering from scurvy. Lind limited his subjects to men who "were as similar as I could have them", that is he provided strict entry requirements to reduce extraneous variation. He divided them into six pairs, giving each pair different supplements to their basic diet for two weeks. The treatments were all remedies that had been proposed: * A quart of cider every day * Twenty five gutts (drops) of elixir vitriol (sulphuric acid) three times a day upon an empty stomach * One half-pint of seawater every day * A mixture of garlic, mustard, and horseradish in a lump the size of a nutmeg * Two spoonfuls of vinegar three times a day * Two oranges and one lemon every day

    The men given citrus fruits recovered dramatically within a week. One of them returned to duty after six days, and the others cared for the rest. The other subjects experienced some improvement, but nothing compared to the subjects who ate the citrus fruits, which proved substantially superior to the other treatments.

1757

• (Lind, 1757) ⇒ James Lind. (1757). “A Treatise on the Scurvy.”

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