In 1740 the British naval officer George Anson set sail with a squadron of eight ships to circumnavigate the globe. The voyage was a complete disaster, and the crew was devastated by scurvy. Of the original 1,854 sailors to participate in the expedition, only 188 returned to Britain four years later. This is probably one of the most infamous historical episodes in maritime medical history. The cost of human life was high, and physicians and surgeons were unable to provide any answers as to the causes of the disease. It was this lack of explanation that had been puzzling the so-called experts for centuries. If you do not know the source of the disease, how do you manage and treat it? Scurvy was quickly becoming the bane of the British Empire, and even with major medical transformations occurring throughout the nineteenth century, it continued to confound the medical establishment right into the twentieth. Scurvy was an enigma.

Jonathan Lamb's new book, Scurvy: The Disease of Discovery, is a fascinating and sensitive recasting of scurvy's past. As a source, it will be of great value to both medical and maritime historians. It is not a triumphalist narrative that leads the reader towards an inevitable conclusion – that vitamin C can eradicate scorbutic symptoms. Rather, it provides a more complicated narrative, one that weaves in and out of the classic storyline, showing how the voyage to uncovering scurvy's cure was long and arduous. Scurvy was not just a disease of discovery because it mainly affected sailors on long voyages; it was also a disease of discovery because it forced medical practitioners to explore and experiment with various ways of treating and managing scorbutic patients. Overall, there is much to praise about Lamb's book, especially its lucid prose and depth of historical coverage.

There are five chapters in Lamb's book, each focusing a subtle, original perspective on the history of scurvy. Chapter 1, ‘Enigma’, examines how the cure for scurvy continued to elude medical practitioners for centuries, even though some physicians and surgeons came desperately close to cracking it. Chapter 2, ‘Effluvia’, discusses scurvy's link to bad-air theories such as miasmas. Chapter 3, ‘Nostalgia’, is probably the most nuanced section of the book, moving beyond a discussion that looks at scurvy's physical toll on sufferers, to its mental affliction. A theme that repeatedly arises in the primary sources is how scorbutic patients had a pathological wanting for home; one that seemed to be independent of the standard sense of yearning that sailors at sea for extended periods often possessed. Chapter 4, ‘Australia’, focuses on how the discovery, and subsequent exploration and settlement, of the great southern continent led to a rise in the number of scurvy sufferers – mainly because travellers to Australia were sea-bound for long periods of time. Through this relationship with Australia, scurvy becomes associated with unknown, distant places. Finally, in Chapter 5, ‘Genera mixta’, Lamb examines the different narratorial forms that writers of scurvy used when describing the disease. There is also a ‘Coda’ at the end of the book, written by James May and Fiona Harrison, which gives a fairly straightforward historical, epidemiological account of scurvy.

Lamb also examines some of the better-known episodes in the history of scurvy, such as James Lind's clinical testing of scorbutic patients aboard the HMS Salisbury during the 1740s, and James Cook's success in keeping his crew free of scurvy aboard the HMS Endeavour during his first voyage to the South Pacific between 1768 and 1771. Yet, as Lamb shows in his book, neither of these events led to the end of scurvy. In both cases we see the historical actors coming close to eradicating the disease, and then still falling short. Lind, for example, knew that there was a positive correlation between eating fresh food, drinking citrus juice and curing scorbutic patients. However, because he did not know that scurvy was caused by a deficiency in vitamin C, it was impossible for him to know why these treatments worked. In fact, we are told that Lind believed that scurvy was caused by toxicity in canned foods – thus the culprit was a type of bacterial poisoning, not a deficiency in nutrients. Eating fewer canned foods, according to Lind, would limit the amount of toxin one consumed, lessening the chance of contracting scurvy.

Cook similarly misunderstood his positive results during his voyage to the South Pacific. Like Lind, he did not know the cause of scurvy and, to combat the disease on his ship, he used several preventive measures, including strict rules on hygiene, airing the ship, and a special diet that included sauerkraut, vinegar and wort. Cook also made anchor regularly throughout the voyage to restock the ship, which meant that he and his men had some access to fresh foods with higher levels of vitamin C. However, on returning to Britain, Cook was adamant that it was wort that kept his crew free of scurvy. Lamb, however, suggestively argues that perhaps many of Cook's crewmen were not suffering from scurvy, but beriberi, another disease of deficiency with similar symptoms to that of scurvy. Beriberi, though, was caused by a lack of vitamin B1 in the diet; something that wort was rich in. This conflation between different types of disease further complicated the fight against scurvy.

Even with so much to praise about the book, Lamb's study is not without its faults. The biggest issue is that the introduction does not really connect the narrative to the larger historiographical picture. There is not a clear sense of how Lamb's account builds upon, and moves beyond, previous works on scurvy. There is no doubt that Lamb's book is a highly valuable contribution to the secondary literature, but it really needed to be better situated within the larger historiography. How, for instance, does this innovative, sensitive retelling of scurvy's history redefine the way we think about other diseases such as cholera, typhoid or malaria? Are there any important lessons that can be applied to these other cases? With a little more attention to questions of this sort, the significance of the book could have been even greater. Nevertheless, Lamb's book is a fine piece of scholarship, and will be staple reading for anyone looking at the history of disease and empire for years to come.