The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1883-02-03 00:00:00

THREATENED SCARCITY of POTATOES.

The Times has published the following letter:—

Sir,—" To be forewarned is to forearmed." Ireland
is now threatened with a potato famine; it therefore
behoves us to be on the alert to avert the con-
sequences of such a calamity. One, and not the least,
would inevitably be an outbreak of scurvy. It must
be in the memory of many of your readers that some
twenty or thirty years ago, when potatoes were scarce
in North Wales, scurvy prevailed to an alarming
extent. The poor people when questioned respect-
ing their mode of living, mostly told the same tale
—viz, that they had not tasted vegetables for twelve
or eighteen months, and had lived chiefly on bread
and butter and tea, a little meat, but no kind of vege-
table. In the Rime year many severe and even fatal
cases occurred in the town of Nottingham among the
poor who had been deprived of the use of fresh vege•
tables during the past winter. The cause was attri-
buted to the potato disease which prevailed at this
time. In the same year scurvy appeared in Glasgow,
also in Paris, as well as in other cities and towns in
the United Kingdom, and on the Continent. It reap-
peared in Ireland coincident with the potato famine.
Some years since, during months of continued ob-
servation of the prisoners confined in the Penitentiary
at Milbank, Sir Thomas Watson had remarked,
without being able to account for it, that among the
small number of soldiers committed for comparatively
short periods, for offences against military discipline,
scurvy was not uncommon, whereas it was noticed in
one instance only among the much more numerous
class of convicts, whose term of imprisonment was
considerably longer. Dr. William Baly was after-
wards appointed physician to the Penitentiary, and
the same curious fact, we are told by Sir Thomas,
soon caught his attention. By the examination
and comparison of various dietaries—those namely
which have been adopted at different periods, in the
Penitentiary itself, those which at the same period
were prescribed respectively for the military offenders
and for the ordinary convicts, and those in use in
other sundry other gaols in which scurvy occurred with
different degrees of frequency—Dr. Baly has shown,
Sir Thomas Watson states' most satisfactorily, that
the liability to that malady has a strict relation to the
' amount of succulent vegetables consumed by the pri-
soners, and especially of po:atoes :
"Wherever the disease has prevailed, there the diet
of the prisoners, though often abundant in other re-
spects, has contained no potatoes, or only a very small
quantity. In several prisons the occurrence of scurvy
has wholly ceased on the addition of a few pounds of
potatoes being made to the weekly dietary. There
are many prisons in which the diet, from its um aried
character and the absence of animal food as well as
green vegetables, is apparently most inadequate to the
maintenance of health, and where, nevertheless, from
its containing abundance of potatoes, scurvy is not
produced."
To the question, "What are we to do if potatoes
shr.uld be unattainable?" I suggest onions, greens,
turnips, tomatoes, watercress, sorrel, dandelion,
oranges, and lemons; and last, yet not least—revolting
as it may appear to some people—blood, which is un-
questionably an antis corbutic, and, moreover, contains
a very considerable amount of nutritive material.
Now that the culinary art has attained such perfection,
it could be prepared in a variety of ways, and the
cost would he almost nil. I may, en passant, remark
to highly sensitive persons that blood in many parts of
America is a fashionable beverage, and is looked upon
as a great remedial agent for invalids suffering from
arise ads and malaise.—l have the honour to be, Sir,
your obedient servant,
W. DomErr-STown, M.D., FelTow of the Royal
College of Surgeons.
19, Oxford-terrace, Hyde-park, W.