The Sailor's Cure Hiding in Plain Sight

For nearly three hundred years, scurvy was the most feared killer on the open sea. Between 1500 and 1800, it claimed more sailors' lives than storms, shipwrecks, and combat combined — an estimated two million men. Their gums blackened, their teeth fell out, old wounds reopened as if time itself were unraveling. Ship captains tried everything: vinegar tonics, sulfuric acid, seawater gargling.…