15 Comments
Jul 27·edited Jul 27Liked by Andrew Smith

So my affinity for gin and tonic with lemon is proof that I care about my health and maintain my collagen levels? Take that, "We need to talk about your alcohol problem, Daniel."

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Well yeah, plus the quinine will keep the malaria at bay! It's like a super duper health tonic, really.

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Jul 27Liked by Andrew Smith

That's pretty much all I needed to hear!

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Beer is pretty much bread, too, so there's that. It's all health food!

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Jul 27Liked by Andrew Smith

I recently had shingles and scurvy at the same time! My doctor asked me if I was a pirate!

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Whoa! Was the shingles messing up your ability to take in Vitamin C? I read that that can happen too.

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Jul 27Liked by Andrew Smith

My levels of Vitamin C were "undetectable". Wha!? Not sure why it happened.

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In spite of how much we know about the human body (it's a LOT!), there's just so much more we're still trying to figure out. Yikes!

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I believe we know a lot more than when the below quote was written, but it is still valid in certain areas of medicine:

Doctors put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know less for diseases of which they know nothing at all. - Voltaire

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Eventually, the noun "limey" would come to be used to identify not just English sailors but England as a whole, often in a pejorative fashion.

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Great article. It proves my affinity for fruits is a very positive thing indeed. Still, the affinity mustn't affect my affinity for beer.

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Thanks, Adetokunbo! I agree: don't let your love for fruits mess up your other passions!

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Jul 27Liked by Andrew Smith

Yes , see farring/faring is a very cool word!

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Jul 27·edited Jul 27Liked by Andrew Smith

Your post reminded me about reading below from Wikipedia in some books (However, you are correct; Lind was the first person to prove the remedy scientifically):

The Spanish already knew about the use of citrus fruits as a remedy since the second half of the 16th century, more than 100 years before the birth of James Lind, thanks to the treatise by Fray Agustín Farfán in 1579 under the title Tratado breve de anatomía y cirugía, y de algunas enfermedades where the use of oranges and lemons is recommended for the treatment of scurvy.

The other item is how long it sometimes takes for a cure or a remedy to be implemented. In this case, it was about 50 years. However, while hand hygiene has been recognized since the mid-19th century, it has taken over a century for it to become a universally accepted norm in healthcare settings.

Correction: In 1980s, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published the first formal guidelines on hand hygiene in healthcare settings, which began to standardize the practice.

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Yes, It seems accepted history is often written by those in power (in this case, the British).

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