THE MEDICAL ASPECT OF THE DISCOVERY'S VOYAGE TO THE ANTARCTIC
Authors: E. A. Wilson
Journal: BMJ (1905)

IT is natural that in an expedition in which the general health of all concerned was on the whole so perfectly main- tained as it was on board the Discovery, there should be but little of interest to say in this connexion ; nevertheless, it may be worth wbile to give a short account of the conditions of life, of work and play, of summer and winter, of light and darkness, of food and lack of food, of warmth, ventilation, clothing, and exposure to excessive cold, all the hundred and one important and so-called unimportant items, the neglect of which so readily produce disease, and the careful consideration of which, with a certain amount of good luck, can make a ship's crew healthy, and keep it healthy, through three Antarctic summers and two dark winters.DIET.I will begin, therefore, by giving an idea of our method in food and drink on the ship and on sledge journeys.Tinned Foods and Scurvy.Our equipment in these respects was almost as good as one could wish.It is true that here and there were exceptions, but, on the whole, our food supply was probably better in many ways than that of any previous expedition to the North or South.It was, therefore, an unwelcome surprise to us, at the end of a year on tinned foods, albeit with a certain con- stant admixture of fresh salt meat, to find that when we began to exert ourselves in the early spring sledge journeys at the end of the first winter, signs of scurvy appeared in more than one or two.Now this scurvy declared itself notwithstanding every possible precaution in the serving out of the tinned ioods.Not a tin of suspicious food was ever passed, and each day not only was every tin of meat examined by sight and smell, but also every tin of milk the moment it was opened.Fresh seal meat was on tbe table three days a week, as well as frozen mutton on bundays.We had, moreover, beer and cider, and bottled fruits, witlh jam and marmalade in abundance, and an unlimited supply of porridge and fresh bread.On the first of every month there was a general examina- tion of all hands on board, of officers as well as men, stripped naked.Weights and various measurements were taken regularly, and compared with those of the previous month, eo that we knew exactly who, if any, were losing weight; who were out of sorts; or who had any spots, swellings, or oedema.At tbe close of the first year, when all were keenly preparing for the spring sledging, we knew that but one man in the ship had shown at any time the slighest suspicious signs of scurvy in the shape of some unaccountable oedema of the legs, with nothing amiss apparently either in heart or kidneys, and no suggestion of scurvy about the gums.Then came the spring sledge journeys, the most trying of all, as they are undertaken in September when the days for travelling are still very short, the nights distressingly long, and the temperature persistently somewhere about 300 or 400 below zero F., occasionally running down to -60°.The lowest temperature experienced at all was -680, and this was under canvas, when three separate expeditions were out for journeys which varied from ten days to a fortnight each.It was in an expedition which bad been out three weeks from the ship, under such conditions as these, that scurvy first declared itself.