Non-fiction audiobook review: Scurvy, by Stephen R. Bown
This one comes out of the "random audiobooks on historical/science/nature topics" file. Title: Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner,and an Gentleman Solve the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail Author: Stephen R. Bown Publisher : Phoenix Books, Inc., 2007, 8 hours. Original hardback published 2003 by Viking, 256 pages. Source: Library Publisher's Blurb (from Overdrive) : A lively recounting of how three determined individuals overcame the constraints of 18th century thinking to solve the greatest medical mystery of their era. The cure for scurvy ranks among the greatest of military successes, yet its impact on history has mostly been ignored. Stephen Bown, in this engaging and often gripping book, searches back to the earliest recorded appearance of scurvy in the 16th century, to the 18th century, when the disease was at its gum-shred, bone-snapping worst, to the early 19th century, when the preventative was finally put into service. Bown introduces us,...