[*** Having been favoured with a sight of the medical journal of Mr. Patten, surgeon to the Resolution, I read the following passage in it, not a little strengthening the above testimony. I have found the wort of the utmost service in all scorbutic cases during the voyage. As many took it by way of prevention, few cases occurred where it had a fair trial; but theft, however, I flatter myself, will he sufficient to convince every impartial person, that it is the best remedy hitherto found out for the cure of the sea scurvy: and I am well convinced, from what I have seen the wort perform, and from its mode of operation, that if aided by portable-soup, sour krout, sugar, sago, and courants, then scurvy, that maritime pestilence, will seldom or never make its alarming appearance among a ship's crew, on the longest voyages; proper care with regard to cleanliness and provisions being observed.]
This salutary gas (or fixed air) is contained more or less in all fermentable liquors, and begins to oppose putrefaction as soon as the working or intestine motion commences.
In wine it abounds, and perhaps no vegetable substance is more replete with it than the juice of the grape. If we join the grateful taste of wine, we must rank it the first in the list of antiscorbutic liquors. Cyder is likewise good, with other vinous productions from fruit, as also the various kinds of beer. It hath been a constant observation, that in long cruizes or distant voyages, the scurvy is never seen whilst the small-beer holds out, at a full allowance; but that when it is all expended, that ailment soon appears. It were therefore to be wished, that this most wholesome beverage could be renewed at sea; but our ships afford not sufficient convenience. The Russians however make a shift to prepare on board, as well as at land, a liquor of a middle quality between wort and small-beer, in the following manner. They take ground-malt and rye-meal in a certain proportion, which they knead into small loaves, and bake in the oven. These they occasionally infuse in a proper quantity of warm water, which begins so soon to ferment, that in the space of twenty-four hours their brewage is completed, in the production of a small, brisk, and acidulous liquor, they call quas, palatable to themselves, and not disagreeable to the taste of strangers. The late Dr. Mounsey, fellow of this Society, who had lived long in Russia, and had been Archiater under two successive sovereigns, acquainted me, that the quas was the common and wholesome drink both of the fleets and armies of that empire, and that it was particularly good against the scurvy. He added, that happening to be at Moscow when he perused my Observations on the Jail and Hospital Fever, then lately published*, he had been induced to compare what he read in that treatise with what he should see in the several prisons of that large city: but to his surprize, after visiting them all, and finding them full of malefactors (for the late Empress then suffered none of those who were convicted of capital crimes to be put to death) yet he could discover no fever among them, nor learn that any acute distemper peculiar to jails had ever been known there. He observed, that some of those places of confinement had a yard, into which the prisoners were allowed to come for the air; but that there were others without that advantage, yet not sickly: so that he could assign no other reason for the healthful condition of those men than the kind of diet they used, which was the same with that of the common people of the country; who not being able to purchase fresh-meat, live mostly on rye-bread (the most acescent of any) and drink quas. He concluded with saying, that upon his return to St. Petersburg he had made the same inquiry there, and with the same result.
[* That treatise was first published by itself, and afterwards incorporated with the Observations on the Diseases of the Army.]
Thus far Dr. Mounsey, from whose account it would seem, that the rye-meal assisted both in quickening the fermentation and adding more fixed air, since the malt alone could not so readily produce so tart and brisk a liquor. And there is little doubt but that whenever the other grains can be brought to a proper degree of fermentation, they will more or less in the same way become useful. That oats will, I am satisfied from what I have been told by one of the intelligent friends of Captain Cook. This gentleman being on a cruize in a large ship*, in the beginning of the late war, and the scurvy breaking out among his crew, he bethought him self of a kind of food he had seen used in some parts of the country, as the most proper on the occasion. Some oatmeal is put into a wooden vessel, hot water is poured upon it, and the infusion continues until the liquor begins to taste sourish, that is, till a fermentation comes on, which in a place moderately warm, may be in the space of two days. The water is then poured off from the grounds, and boiled down to the consistence of a jelly**. This he ordered to be made and dealt out in messes, being first sweetened with sugar, and seasoned with some prize French wine, which though turned sour, yet improved the taste, and made this aliment not less palatable than medicinal.
He assured me, that upon this diet chiefly, and by abstaining from salted meats, his scorbutic sick had quite recovered on board; and not in that voyage only, bur, by the same means, in his subsequent cruizes during the war, without his being obliged to send one of them on shore because they could not get well at sea. Yet oat-meal unfermented, like barley unmalted, hath no sensible effect in curing the scurvy: as if the fixed air, which is incorporated with these grains, could mix with the chyle which they produce, enter the lacteals, and make part of the nourishment of the body, without manifesting any elastic or antiseptic quality, when not loosened by a previous fermentation.
[* The Essex, a seventy-gun ship.]
[** This rural food, in the North, is called Sooins.]
Before the power of the fixed air in subduing putrefaction was known, the efficacy of fruits, greens, and fermented liquors, was commonly ascribed to the acid in their composition and we have still reason to believe that the acid concurs in operating that effect. If it be alleged that mineral acids, which contain little or no fixed air, have been tried in the scurvy with little success, I would answer, that I doubt that in those trials they have never been sufficiently diluted; for it is easy to conceive, that in the small quantity of water the elixir of vitriol, for instance, is commonly given, that austere acid can scarce get beyond the first passages; considering the delicate sensibility of the mouths of the lacteals, which must force them to shut and exclude so pungent a liquor. It were therefore a proper experiment to be made, in a deficiency of malt, or when that grain shall happen to be spoilt by keeping*, to use water acidulated with the spirit of sea-salt, in the proportion of only ten drops to a quart; or with the weak spirit of vitriol, thirteen drops to the same measure**; and to give to those that are threatened with the disease three quarts of this liquor daily, to be consumed as they shall think proper.
[* Captain Cook told me, that the malt held out sufficiently good for the two first years; but that in the third, having lost much of its taste, he doubted whether it retained any of its virtues. Mr. Patten however observed, that though the malt at that time was sensibly decayed, yet nevertheless he had still found it useful when he employed a large proportion of it to make the infusion.]