South Pole Race: When the Limeys Get Scurvy

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

08/12/22 • 33 min

5.0

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Polar exploration is dangerous... but trudging hundreds of miles in subzero temperatures isn't made any easier if you're suffering from scurvy. The deadly vitamin deficiency destroys the body and will of even the strongest and most determined adventurer - and it seems that scurvy stuck down the ill-fated expedition of Captain Scott.

But scurvy... in 1912? Hadn't the Royal Navy to which Scott belonged famously cracked the problem of scurvy a century before, with a daily dose of lime juice? How did the 'Limeys' seemingly unlearn that lesson?

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08/12/22 • 33 min

2 Listeners

5.0

(2)

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - South Pole Race: When the Limeys Get Scurvy

Transcript

Speaker 100:00:15.369

Pushkin. In the first two episodes of our three part series on the Race for the Pole, we heard about how the British Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott raced the Norwegian adventurer Roald Amunson to the South Pole, and why Scott had lost that race. But there's one mysterious feature of that race that we've barely discussed, and one which raises a much broader question. What's it like to learn a vital lesson and then to lose your grip on that lesso