Aarati Asundi (00:11) Hi everyone and welcome back to the Smart Tea Podcast where we talk about the lives of scientists and innovators who shaped the world. I'm Aarati. Jyoti Asundi (00:19) And I'm Jyoti, her mom. Aarati Asundi (00:20) And guess what, Mom? You are the inspiration for this week's episode. Jyoti Asundi (00:26) No way. Why? Aarati Asundi (00:28) So a couple weeks ago, I went to the farmer's market and I got this huge bag of oranges and apparently they were a huge hit. I had no idea. So then the next week I went back, I did not get the oranges and you were extremely disappointed in me and asking me... Jyoti Asundi (00:45) Never, never, never disappointed in you. Always in the farmers market. Aarati Asundi (00:50) But disappointed you didn't get oranges. And I hadn't realized that it was such a big thing. Jyoti Asundi (00:56) Yeah, keep my immune system up, man. Aarati Asundi (00:59) Yeah. So then I think around the same time, we also ran out of lemon juice that we had squeezed from... We have a lemon tree in our garden and it had produced kind of a bumper crop of lemons over the winter. Jyoti Asundi (01:15) And we worked through it so quickly. Aarati Asundi (01:17) Yeah, so I was like, what is this? We have apparently no lemon juice. We have no oranges. Like our family is just going through all of this. Jyoti Asundi (01:23) Yeah a dearth on citrus yes yes ⁓ Aarati Asundi (01:26) Yeah, all of the citrus. But I was thinking, you know, well, I mean, at least we're not going to get scurvy in this house. Jyoti Asundi (01:36) That was such a bad disease. I think it was called...the scurvy was called the Scourge of the Sailors. Aarati Asundi (01:45) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (01:46) ⁓ We don't know about those diseases anymore because we are in a developed country now and the importance of all these nutrients are known. But yeah, it was a bad one in those early days. Yes. Aarati Asundi (02:02) You know, it's so weird how my brain makes these connections of like, "Oh well, you know, we're going through citrus fruits like crazy, at least we're not going to get scurvy." And I'm like, when did I learn that? Jyoti Asundi (02:14) Yes, why did I say that? Why did my brain make that little connection? Yes, yes. Aarati Asundi (02:19) Yeah, like when did I learn that? Why did I learn that? And it's one of those things that just has stuck in my brain. And so I went hunting to find out more about this. And I came across this man named James Lind, who was the one who kind of put it together that citrus fruits were actually a cure for scurvy. And I was like, yeah, I remember learning about this in high school or something. So that's who we're going to be talking about today. Jyoti Asundi (02:51) James Lind? Aarati Asundi (02:52) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (02:53) All right. Aarati Asundi (02:54) And I thought it was actually also a good one to maybe listen to after Frances Oldham Kelsey. If you have not listened to that one, I would suggest going back and listening to that one. And this is a really good kind of dovetail off of it because in the Frances Oldham Kelsey episode, we were talking about drug development and how important it is to conduct proper clinical trials. And actually, James Lind isn't really famous for out necessarily that citrus was able to cure scurvy. He's actually famous because he conducted the very first clinical trial, like official clinical trial. Jyoti Asundi (03:37) So James Lind, James Lind was the person who actually figured out how to design a clinical trial and extract meaningful information from these trials. Aarati Asundi (03:49) Well of course, since it's the first clinical trial, it's not going to be like, there's definite holes. It's not going to be the most stellar immaculate clinical trial ever conducted. But the concept Jyoti Asundi (04:01) But the thought that it has to be properly organized, it has to be properly set up in order to confirm that the hypothesis is actually correct. That is an important concept. Aarati Asundi (04:14) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (04:15) Nice, I like it. Aarati Asundi (04:18) So that's what we're going to be doing today. So let's talk first a little bit about James Lind as a person and a little bit about his background. So James was born on October 4, 1716 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His parents were James and Margaret Lind, and he had an older sister. James Lind Senior, his father, was a merchant and the family was doing pretty well for themselves. Given that this is so early in time, there's not too much known about his childhood, like not many records were kept. We know that he had pretty good education because their family pretty well. Jyoti Asundi (04:59) A merchant so he has decent money yes Aarati Asundi (05:02) Yes, and he took an early interest in medicine, probably because his uncle was a physician. Jyoti Asundi (05:09) Nice. Aarati Asundi (05:10) And he became pretty proficient in a few languages like Latin and Greek, particularly because these are the languages that were used a lot in medicine at the time. And he also studied German and French. So that's about what we know in terms of his education. Jyoti Asundi (05:25) Prolific in languages. That's nice. Aarati Asundi (05:28) When James was 15, he started an apprenticeship under a surgeon named George Langlands. And this, again, is the time when being a physician and being a surgeon were two very different tracks. So physicians were more educated and higher class than surgeons. This is about 100 years before Joseph Lister, who we talked about in episode three. Jyoti Asundi (05:54) Yes. So Lind is trying to become a surgeon... he's apprenticing under a surgeon. Aarati Asundi (06:00) Yes, correct. Aarati Asundi (06:01) In those days, I think surgeons were almost equivalent of butchers before Lister was... Aarati Asundi (06:09) Yes, it was really brutal, very dirty, painful and scary for the patient to have to undergo surgery because there's no anesthesia. Jyoti Asundi (06:18) No anesthesia, no anesthesia. No sterile techniques. So the chances of getting gangrene or any kind of infection on that open wound is definitely common. Aarati Asundi (06:33) You're just as likely to die from an infection after the surgery as you are from blood loss during this surgery. Jyoti Asundi (06:39) during the surgery, yes. Aarati Asundi (06:41) Yeah, so not for the fainthearted. Jyoti Asundi (06:42) And in fact, I read somewhere that the surgeons in those days, the faster you were, the more skilled you were considered to be because you got through it very quickly. Aarati Asundi (06:53) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (06:54) What had to be done had to be done and the faster you do it and get the person out of their torment, the better you are. Aarati Asundi (07:01) Yes, the minimal amount of pain for the patient. Jyoti Asundi (07:06) Horrible, horrible times. Aarati Asundi (07:08) Yes. Thank God we don't do that anymore. So James is working under George Langlands, and he's learning how to bandage wounds, reset bones, and drain blood. Also, at the same time, attended some lectures on medicine at the University of Edinburgh, although he wasn't formally enrolled as a student. Here he learned the prevailing idea that physicians had at the time, which was that the body was composed of four humors, blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. And all of these humors had to be balanced in a healthy body. Jyoti Asundi (07:47) Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on. Blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Aarati Asundi (07:55) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (07:55) These were considered to be the four vital humors slash... and humors as in fluids Aarati Asundi (08:02) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (08:04) Interesting. This was what was considered in those days. This was what was thought. Aarati Asundi (08:10) Yes. And diseases were all caused by like an imbalance in these humors. Jyoti Asundi (08:13) Imbalance in these four. Aarati Asundi (08:14) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (08:15) That's interesting. I'm trying to figure out... I'm just trying to translate this thought process into sort of a modern day context. Aarati Asundi (08:25) Yeah, so. Yellow bile was associated with choleric individuals and believed to aid in digestion and flush out impurities. Jyoti Asundi (08:37) Okay. Aarati Asundi (08:38) Black bile was associated with melancholy, and believed to have a solidifying and retentive effect on metabolism and bone building. Blood was to be related to energy and nutrition, interestingly, associated with being active and social and lively, which makes sense. This is all straight from Wikipedia, by the way. Jyoti Asundi (09:05) Okay. Aarati Asundi (09:06) And phlegm was associated with pus, mucus, saliva, and sweat, also associated with the brain, possibly because of the color of the brain tissue? Jyoti Asundi (09:13) ⁓ they all mixed up. All right. Aarati Asundi (09:17) All that gray matter. Jyoti Asundi (09:19) Yeah. Wow, this is so interesting! So they basically had the body divided into four different regions, basically the lymphatic, the digestive, the respiratory, the cognitive, they called it the four humors and said they all have to be balanced for the individual to be balanced. Okay, okay. Aarati Asundi (09:38) Yes. And he learns about this and, believes in it and thinks... Jyoti Asundi (09:42) Of course, because that's the prevalent thought. Aarati Asundi (09:45) Yes. He spent eight years working under Dr. Langlands, at which point he applied to join the Royal Navy as a surgeon's mate to get more experience. So basically, a surgeon's mate is an assistant to the main surgeon on a Navy ship. Jyoti Asundi (10:02) Yes. Aarati Asundi (10:03) And his job consisted mostly of menial tasks like washing wounds, bandaging or changing bandages and sweeping and cleaning up in general. But again, when I say cleaning up, we are so far away from sanitization. Jyoti Asundi (10:18) Sterile techniques, yes. We are nowhere near sterile techniques. It was just basically keep things orderly... Aarati Asundi (10:24) Keep things tidy. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (10:25) ...wipe the blood off. Yes, sweep the floor off of all the extra body parts that were thrown out. Oh my goodness, I'm so grateful I'm not in those times. Aarati Asundi (10:36) Okay, wait for it because I was actually reading some descriptions of what it was like to be on a Navy ship at the time. So it's like, not only do you have this layer of, surgery being really awful... Jyoti Asundi (10:50) Yes. Aarati Asundi (10:50) but being a sailor at the time was also just the most horrible experience. I can't believe that anyone survived a voyage at sea at this time reading these descriptions. So Stephen R. Bone wrote quote, "The sailors wooden world was infested with refuse, trash, rotting flesh, urine and vomit. The mariners were either crammed into their quarters like sardines in a box or slept occasionally in good weather, sprawled like hounds on the deck. The holds were crammed with vermin, festering and spoiled provisions and in some cases rotting corpses. End quote. Jyoti Asundi (11:33) Oh no! ⁓ Aarati Asundi (11:34) Jyoti Asundi (11:35) Oh no, and you're trapped, you're trapped in that sea. Aarati Asundi (11:39) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (11:40) You have nowhere to go, there's no place to get away from the ship. Aarati Asundi (11:42) Yeah. And that's without like, now if you're sick on top of that, or if you need surgery on top of that, like... Jyoti Asundi (11:49) ⁓ Forget it. Forget it. You can just make sure that your last will is in place. Aarati Asundi (11:56) I'm going to throw myself overboard because that'll probably be a faster.... Jyoti Asundi (11:59) It'll be less painful. Yeah. Oh my goodness, horrible. Truly horrible. Aarati Asundi (12:06) So unsurprisingly at this time, the thing that killed most Navy sailors wasn't storms at sea or warfare. It was disease and malnourishment. Jyoti Asundi (12:17) Yes, yes, I can't believe that such unhygienic conditions prevailed. This was the time when they were going out conquering various lands by sea. Aarati Asundi (12:28) Yes. Yes. So that's a great segue. I'm about to get into that. So in 1740, a naval officer, Commodore George Anson of the British Royal Navy, set off on a voyage to South America to try to take over some Spanish territories in the Pacific. Jyoti Asundi (12:48) Yes. Aarati Asundi (12:48) Spain was bringing back so much wealth at this time in terms of precious metals like silver and sugar and tobacco and other spices from territories in South America and the Caribbean and Britain and Spain had been butting heads for a really long time over this area and so Commodore George Anson from the British Navy has a squadron of six warships and two supply ships that are sent out to disrupt or capture Spanish possessions in this area. Jyoti Asundi (13:23) Yes. Aarati Asundi (13:24) So he set out from Great Britain with 1,854 sailors under his command. He ended up circumnavigating the globe on this voyage. And by the time he made it back, only 188 men had survived the trip. Jyoti Asundi (13:43) That's about 10%. Aarati Asundi (13:45) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (13:46) Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. That is horrifying. Aarati Asundi (13:54) Yes. You know, they were going there to basically wage war with the Spanish, but their journey has been very well documented. And it turns out that by far the biggest killer of men was not their battles with the Spanish or storms at sea, but disease. Jyoti Asundi (14:12) Wow. This basic concept that maybe the men who fight under them need to be better cared for. That connection was not there in the brain. Aarati Asundi (14:22) No, not at all. Jyoti Asundi (14:24) They I know that in those days British at least they had this aristocracy. There were about 500 families I believe that were at the top of the food chain at that point. Rest of them were all like, you managed to eke out a living. Some of them raised to better positions with some sort of being a naval officer or some sort of a merchant or like you said surgeon or something like that. But then the masses, there was great inequality of wealth distribution and resource distribution. So no attention was paid to people who were actually doing the hard work. Aarati Asundi (15:10) And that's what I was also reading was that, you know, a lot of these ships, they would just pack on a bunch of extra people because they knew that these men were going to die probably from disease. And so their solution was not to try and figure this out or try to make the living better. Jyoti Asundi (15:26) fix the problem, fix the root cause. Aarati Asundi (15:27) Yeah, their solution was, well, okay, so if 50 % of the people are going to die, add on an extra 50 % of people so that when those 50 % of people die, we still have enough people to run the ship. Jyoti Asundi (15:39) but which actually aggravates the root cause even further. Aarati Asundi (15:42) Yes, it makes it all worse. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (15:44) My, so brilliant. Aarati Asundi (15:46) Yeah. These men are facing numerous illnesses including typhoid fever, lice, dysentery, malaria, and scurvy. Jyoti Asundi (15:53) Yes. And that would spread so quickly. One person catches it, brings it in. That's it. The entire ship is now compromised. The vermin actually, the rats and the mice, they're such good carriers of the disease also. They add to the problem further. They spread it out, you know, like by getting into the food, going from one to another, Aarati Asundi (16:15) Yeah, and they're having a great time because all the food is like starting to get moldy already and it's not great and the rats don't care. So they're having a great time. Jyoti Asundi (16:24) They are having a great time and then the moldy food is now further aggravating the problem because they're getting sick. This is horrendous to even just listen to. Aarati Asundi (16:35) Yeah, it was bad reading about it. I was like, how are people surviving this? How does anyone live through this? This is insane. And then the fact that James Lind signed up for this voluntarily, I was like, "why?!" Jyoti Asundi (16:50) Yes, why would anybody want to do this? Why would anybody say, yes, sign me on, count me in? Aarati Asundi (16:56) Yeah, sign me up. It sounds like the worst possible job to be a surgeon on a naval ship. Jyoti Asundi (17:02) Yes, it's like sign me on to live in these horrendous conditions so that I can inflict a lot of pain onto people in the name of you know healing them. This is this is a... Aarati Asundi (17:07) Yes. Yes, I could not. Jyoti Asundi (17:15) ... different mindset. Aarati Asundi (17:16) I could not. Different breed of person, yeah. Jyoti Asundi (17:20) Yes, yes. Aarati Asundi (17:21) Ok so these men are facing numerous illnesses and scurvy in particular killed hundreds of men within just the first few weeks of that voyage of George Anson's voyage. So a little bit more about scurvy. It's like you said, a horrible disease that results from a lack of vitamin C. Jyoti Asundi (17:42) Yes. Aarati Asundi (17:43) So at this time, people didn't know about the existence of vitamins at all. They weren't discovered until 170 years later. But one of the main places that humans get vitamin C is in fruits, especially in citrus fruits like oranges and lemons. But on these naval ships, fresh food went bad really quickly because they didn't have a way to preserve it. Jyoti Asundi (18:08) They don't have methods. Yes. Aarati Asundi (18:10) Yes. And James Lind wrote that typically food on the ship would consist of, quote, putrid beef, rancid pork, moldy biscuits, and flour, end quote. Jyoti Asundi (18:21) Wow, sounds what utterly, what should I say? Aarati Asundi (18:26) Disgusting. Jyoti Asundi (18:27) Horrible, I would rather starve. This is... Aarati Asundi (18:29) Yeah, there's no nutritional value in that at all. Jyoti Asundi (18:33) Forget nutritional value, the food itself is going to make you sick. Aarati Asundi (18:37) Yes, if you try to eat it. Jyoti Asundi (18:39) If it is, if it is becoming rancid, the food is going to make you sick. Aarati Asundi (18:43) Yes. Yes. Jyoti Asundi (18:45) No wonder they had to live in the midst of vomit and all that. No wonder. Any internal digestive system would rebel against this kind of food being put in. It's like, no, no, no, you better starve. This is going to poison you completely. Yeah. Aarati Asundi (18:58) Yeah, a lot of people who were sailors at this time were pressed into it or like basically kidnapped and forced to live on these ships because no one is doing this voluntarily. No one is like, yeah, I'm going to join the Navy and I'm going to... Jyoti Asundi (19:13) This is the flip side of it. So India had been colonized by the British the British systematically more than 150 years, they systematically took away India's wealth. And so I know that side of it. I know that the Indian people suffered a lot through colonization. But here I'm looking now at the flip side of it, that the vast majority of Britishers also seem to have suffered a lot for this colonization process. Aarati Asundi (19:46) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (19:47) The vast majority of the people in the countries were severely affected. They were either dying of disease or they were dying of malnutrition. And there's upper echelons of society who are enjoying the fruits of all of this. Aarati Asundi (20:05) Yes, they're untouched by all the disease and all the hardship. Jyoti Asundi (20:08) Because the money is just siphoning there. The money is just being siphoned upwards. And all the people who are doing the horrible, horrible work or who are being robbed on the other side, they're all just treated like chattel. It's like you're a number. You're not a person. You're a statistic. Aarati Asundi (20:26) Yeah. And sadly, things have not really changed today I feel like. Jyoti Asundi (20:32) Yes, there is... I think ⁓ even like a few years back, there was slightly better equalization of wealth. Aarati Asundi (20:39) Mm-hmm. Yes, it did get better for a little bit. Jyoti Asundi (20:42) A little bit, but again, there's a lot of push to bring that wealth inequality back because of course, how would the wealthy people live if the poor people take some crumbs off their table? That would be terrible for them, poor things. Aarati Asundi (20:57) Yes. Ok so back to scurvy. When someone contracts scurvy, they feel weakness, fatigue, and muscle soreness. As the disease progresses, patients develop gum disease. Their teeth start to get loose, and wounds won't heal. There was even one reported case where a man who had broken a bone years ago caught scurvy, and that bone that had supposedly healed broke again in exactly the same way. Jyoti Asundi (21:29) Yes. Aarati Asundi (21:31) Ultimately, if left untreated, the patients can develop edema, neuropathy, fever, convulsions, and will finally die. So it's a rough disease. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (21:40) Painful, painful. Aarati Asundi (21:43) So now you add to that Commodore Anson's horrible journey and the way that the story was told. That really is what captured the public's attention. And so now there's renewed interest in figuring out how do we combat scurvy, this horrible disease. We need to figure out a cure. Jyoti Asundi (21:58) Yes. Aarati Asundi (22:01) So now we're going back to James Lind, who's working as a surgeon's mate in the Navy. He was making very careful observations of all the illnesses that he was seeing aboard the ship and what was working to help patients and what wasn't. Particularly, he had seen scurvy several times and he had seen all of the things that people were trying to get rid of it and nothing was really working. Jyoti Asundi (22:23) Yes. Aarati Asundi (22:24) The one thing that did seem to have some benefit was citrus. And like I mentioned, this is not his idea. This is just something he's observing. Jyoti Asundi (22:35) Yes, empirical. It's an empirical observation. He's observing that it's available. Yes. Okay. Aarati Asundi (22:40) Yes, but citrus as a treatment to treat scurvy dates all the way back to the early 1600s when an English sailor, Sir James Lancaster, brought lemon juice with him on his voyages and made his crew drink three spoonfuls a day to ward off the disease. Jyoti Asundi (23:00) Oh! Aarati Asundi (23:00) When they ran out and his crew started showing signs of scurvy, at the next point he docked, he made sure to stock up on lemons again. Jyoti Asundi (23:08) Smart, ok. Aarati Asundi (23:09) Yeah, so he had kind of figured it out, but he was just a random sailor and not someone who could really make medical claims about this working But there was also a medical professional, a military surgeon named John Woodall, who had also recommended lemon juice should be taken aboard ships to prevent scurvy when it popped up. Jyoti Asundi (23:30) Okay. Aarati Asundi (23:32) But the problem was that there are just so many theories at the time about what might cause scurvy and what might cure it that this lemon juice idea just never really became widespread because there's just so many things that it could be. Jyoti Asundi (23:45) Yes. I bet it was such a horrible thing. Everybody was suggesting every single thing that they could think of. And so the real data got lost in the noise. Aarati Asundi (23:55) Yeah, everyone is just trying everything. So James, who's very interested in all of this, of course, is taking notes and keeping tabs and keeps coming back to this idea that, maybe lemon juice might actually work. Jyoti Asundi (24:11) Hmm Aarati Asundi (24:12) He thought there might be something to the idea of using acids like vitamin C, which is also ascorbic acid. That's what it's called. Jyoti Asundi (24:21) But that information was not known at that time, right? Aarati Asundi (24:25) I think they knew maybe it was acidic. Like they knew that lemon juice and citrus was acidic. Jyoti Asundi (24:31) Okay, citrus acidic, citrus juice is acidic, that's about it. Aarati Asundi (24:36) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (24:36) So then he's thinking, okay, ⁓ if citrus juice fixes it, does any acid fix it? That's where he's going. Aarati Asundi (24:44) Yeah, yeah, that's where he's going. So he thought that maybe acids in general can help prevent the breakdown of the body. Jyoti Asundi (24:53) Yes. Aarati Asundi (24:54) And that seemed promising but it had never been tested properly. Jyoti Asundi (24:58) Okay. Aarati Asundi (24:59) So he starts thinking, what if I were to set up an experiment to see if lemon juice actually works or if it's just like another random treatment that doesn't actually work? As a surgeon's mate, though, he couldn't really do much of anything because he's an assistant to the actual surgeon. So he has no authority to carry out any sort of experiment like this. But in 1747, James was promoted to the ship's surgeon of the HMS Salisbury at the age of 31. And now he has some authority to try his ideas as long as the captain of the ship agreed. Jyoti Asundi (25:35) Okay, so still there is some of somebody else he has to ask. Okay, got it. Aarati Asundi (25:39) Yeah, you can't start messing around the sailors without the captain say so. Jyoti Asundi (25:43) Captain agreeing with this. Okay. Aarati Asundi (25:45) Yes. So in May of 1747, when symptoms of scurvy started showing up on the ship, James went to the ship's captain, the honorable George Edgcumbe, who luckily appreciated science as a whole. And he gave James the green light to try and experiment. Jyoti Asundi (26:05) Okay. Aarati Asundi (26:06) So James took 12 sailors who had advanced symptoms of scurvy. He said, quote, all in general had putrid gums, the spots, and lassitude with weakness of their knees, end quote. He separated the 12 men into six pairs with each pair staying in different rooms and getting different treatments for two weeks. One pair drank one quart of alcoholic cider each day. Jyoti Asundi (26:34) Okay. Aarati Asundi (26:35) The next pair had to take 25 drops of elixir of vitriol, which I looked up. And it's basically a mixture of some alcohol, sulfuric acid, and aromatic spices. Jyoti Asundi (26:49) Okay, That almost sounds like Coca-Cola. That almost sounds like Coca-Cola. Aarati Asundi (26:52) Kind of, it kind of does sound like Coke. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (26:55) Isn't it? Isn't Coca-Cola having some sort of a horrible... Aarati Asundi (26:58) It used to have cocaine in it. Jyoti Asundi (27:00) Oh, seriously? Aarati Asundi (27:02) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (27:03) Oh Lord. I did not know this. Okay. Aarati Asundi (27:04) Which is why they called cocaine coke. Jyoti Asundi (27:06) Alright. Interesting. I did not know this. Sorry, I interrupted you, but ⁓ I'm trying to get what the six pairs were. ⁓ Cider was the first one. And then there is the sulfuric acid concoction. Aarati Asundi (27:18) Elixir of vitriol is the second one. The third pair took two spoonfuls of vinegar three times a day. Jyoti Asundi (27:27) Okay. Aarati Asundi (27:27) The fourth pair had to drink half a pint of sea water a day. Jyoti Asundi (27:32) Oh no, no, no, that's terrible. Okay. That's almost like a negative control. Aarati Asundi (27:37) Yeah, almost. But they actually thought that might work. So that was like a legitimate thing that people thought. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (27:42) Okay, all right. People are floating around this idea that this works. Okay, all right. Aarati Asundi (27:49) Yes. The fifth pair were given two oranges and one lemon everyday Jyoti Asundi (27:54) Oh okay. Aarati Asundi (27:55) And the last pair were given a medicinal paste that consisted of garlic, mustard seed, radish root, balsam, and gum myrrh which was washed down with tamarind and barley water. Jyoti Asundi (28:10) Okay, all right, all right. Aarati Asundi (28:12) Yes. So these are the six treatments. Other than these treatments, the sailors were given exactly the same diet, which James strictly controlled. And they were given laxatives every few days to purge the sailors, quote unquote. Jyoti Asundi (28:27) Got it. Okay. Aarati Asundi (28:29) So no group was like, you kind of mentioned that seawater was kind of like a negative control, but like I said, they really thought that might work. So actually in this experiment, there is no. Yes. Yes. Jyoti Asundi (28:40) In the real design, if you think about it, there was no negative control. Aarati Asundi (28:45) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (28:46) The negative control would be all the other sailors who are not in this experiment. Aarati Asundi (28:51) Yes so there's no control group or no group that was just given plain water or something. Jyoti Asundi (28:58) Okay. Aarati Asundi (28:58) But this setup that he had where he's separating a bunch of sailors into different groups and really tightly controlling their environment and their conditions and what they eat and how they live and just trying to change this one thing about their diet. This is what is regarded as the first clinical trial that was ever done. Jyoti Asundi (29:21) This is the foundation of a well planned out experiment. Aarati Asundi (29:25) Yes. He's pitting all these treatments, supposed the treatments against each other to see if any of them are real. Jyoti Asundi (29:30) Yes, yes, keep as many constants as possible and then just have one variable that changes and then now you can now link that variable to the outcome very clearly. Aarati Asundi (29:43) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (29:44) Nice. Aarati Asundi (29:45) Okay. So curious about the results? Jyoti Asundi (29:48) Absolutely, I am dying, not of scurvy. Aarati Asundi (29:51) OK. Yes, not of scurvy. Thank goodness. Jyoti Asundi (29:53) Of curiosity. Aarati Asundi (30:01) Hi everyone, Aarati here. I hope you're enjoying the podcast. If so, and you wish someone would tell your science story, I founded a science communications company called Sykom, that's S-Y-K-O-M, that can help. Sykom blends creativity with scientific accuracy to create all types of science, communications, content, including explainer videos, slide presentations, science, writing, and more. We work with academic researchers, tech companies, nonprofits, or really any scientists. To help simplify your science, check us out at sykommer.com. That's S-Y-K-O-M-M-E r.com. Back to the story. Aarati Asundi (30:47) So the pair that drank one quart of alcohol improved slightly, but at the end of two weeks, they were still not cured. James thought that maybe the alcohol had slowed down the scurvy, but definitely didn't cure it. And today, scientists think that maybe the alcohol actually did contain a small amount of vitamin C. That would account for this. Jyoti Asundi (31:11) When you say alcohol, didn't you say cider, the first one? Aarati Asundi (31:14) Alcoholic cider. Jyoti Asundi (31:16) Alcoholic... so cider does... That's why that's why I was thinking that that cider must have some vitamin C in it. Aarati Asundi (31:23) Yes. That's what people today think. People today think that because it was alcoholic cider, it probably did have... Jyoti Asundi (31:31) Exactly. So it was not exactly alcohol, it was alcoholic cider. Aarati Asundi (31:36) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (31:36) So cider comes from say apples or whatever, fruit. Aarati Asundi (31:38) Yeah, some fruit, yeah. Jyoti Asundi (31:39) And so there's some vitamin C comes through. So that's what was helping them. Aarati Asundi (31:44) Yes. But it's such low amounts in alcoholic cider that it didn't cure it. Jyoti Asundi (31:49) Yes, because it's broken down by the time. Aarati Asundi (31:51) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (31:52) Yes, because it's not fresh anymore. Aarati Asundi (31:54) Yeah you're not getting a really good dose of it. You're getting this very little bit of it. Jyoti Asundi (31:56) Good dose of it. Yeah. Yes. Aarati Asundi (32:00) Okay, the second group, the men who had the elixir of vitriol, they had better breath and oral hygiene, but otherwise were not cured. Jyoti Asundi (32:11) Hmm, it just cured the symptoms and not the cause. Because you're killing the bacteria in there, the sulphuric acid is basically killing all the things that are now destroying your teeth. Aarati Asundi (32:24) Yes. The three other groups of vinegar, sea water, and medicinal paste treatments didn't do anything, didn't seem to help at all. So the only treatment that really seemed to make a difference were in the men who had the oranges and lemons. And interestingly, they actually ran out of fresh fruit on day six of this clinical trial. But by that time, one sailor was recovered to go back to duty. And the other one was almost fully recovered. Jyoti Asundi (32:56) Wow. That unbelievably excellent. Aarati Asundi (33:00) Yes, so fast. It works so fast. Jyoti Asundi (33:01) Six days, yeah. So they were, you, when you started this story you said he took the 12 of the worst possible cases... Aarati Asundi (33:10) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (33:11) ...and then he was treating them. And of course the captain said, sure, go ahead. these fellows are not going to do anything anyway. Okay, go ahead and do take care of them and use them, use them for their experiment because they are they are of no use to me as a captain. That's what the captain is thinking. Aarati Asundi (33:29) Probably. Jyoti Asundi (33:29) And within six days of oranges, this at least one guy is back on track and the other guy is close to being back on track. Aarati Asundi (33:39) Almost there. Jyoti Asundi (33:39) That is wonderful. Aarati Asundi (33:41) But interestingly though, James didn't go jumping up and down and yelling about to everyone, at least in the moment. He doesn't seem like he tried to spread this news. He doesn't seem like he tried to take his studies any further and replicate this. He keeps this pretty quiet. And I can only speculate based on my research and what I was reading but it kind of sounded like he was almost a bit disappointed that some of the other treatments didn't work. Like drinking seawater would have been an awesome treatment. Jyoti Asundi (34:17) Such an easy, easy fix. It's right there. Drink it. Aarati Asundi (34:19) Yeah, that would have been so easy. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (34:22) I can actually, I kind get a good sense of why he might have been disappointed because the cure turned out to be something that was very difficult to implement. Aarati Asundi (34:35) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (34:37) To convince the powers that be that they need to provide fresh fruit to people on the ship would have been a very difficult task, actually. But if instead you could tell them, yeah, give them the elixir of vitriol, which is very easy to bottle up and not that expensive and it won't get spoiled. Aarati Asundi (35:00) Yes, exactly. Jyoti Asundi (35:01) So he was hoping for an easy and cheap fix, but the fix turned out to be something that was a little more difficult to implement. It's more expensive actually to carry fresh food for so many people make sure that it doesn't get destroyed within few days by whatever vermin and other things. That's a hard one. Aarati Asundi (35:21) Yeah, and you have to plan to make sure, oh, we're probably going to run out at this point. So we need to make a stop at this place to restock. And that takes more time and more money and everything. Jyoti Asundi (35:32) And you have to keep everything clean because fresh fruit will get spoiled quickly. So you have to keep everything. So it's expensive in terms of the fruit. It's expensive in terms of storing and keeping them in good condition, replenishing it, making sure the vermin doesn't get to them. That's an expensive ⁓ treatment. So that is why he is a bit disappointed. Aarati Asundi (35:55) Yeah. And, like all of that is true, but also on the flip side, he also, I think was kind of not convinced that something so simple like eating citrus fruits could cure this horrible disease that imbalanced all your humors and like made your teeth fall out and made your bones break and all these things like... Jyoti Asundi (36:19) Yes, all you do is eat an orange. Aarati Asundi (36:20) Yes, he's like, no way that this one thing could cure scurvy. It has to be more complicated than that. And so it's like this really weirdly simple and yet not so simple solution that he's struggling with. And so he kind of keeps quiet. And very shortly after this experiment in 1748, James retires from the Navy and returns to Edinburgh to pursue his medical degree. And I think one more reason I think that he kept quiet about his findings was because he was a surgeon and he didn't have a medical education that a physician would have had. Jyoti Asundi (36:56) Yes, the physician. He was not a real doctor because only physicians are real doctors. Surgeons were just butchers in those days. Aarati Asundi (37:04) Yes. So he retires from the Navy and goes to Edinburgh to become a real physician to pursue a medical degree. He writes up his thesis on venereal disease, which is another illness that sailors probably contracted all the time. So he was really familiar with it. And he gets his medical degree and he starts practicing medicine around Edinburgh. And he continues his research quietly on scurvy. Jyoti Asundi (37:33) He continues. Okay. Aarati Asundi (37:35) Yeah. Also around this time, he gets married to a woman named Isobel Dickie, who one source says was a cousin of his. Not sure, not a lot known I do know they had four children together, three boys and one girl. Jyoti Asundi (37:50) Okay. Aarati Asundi (37:50) By 1750, James is elected as a fellow at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. And now, finally, James sets about formally writing up the results of the experiment that he did aboard the HMS Salisbury. Jyoti Asundi (38:04) So many years ago. Because now he has the clout and the recognition that is required to lend weight to his sayings. Aarati Asundi (38:14) Yes, and he's been studying it now for many years. However, as he's writing about scurvy and what he learned about it, its causes, symptoms, and all the possible treatments, he gathered so much information that what started out as a short essay actually turned into a three-part book. Jyoti Asundi (38:34) My goodness, that is a lot of work. Aarati Asundi (38:39) A lot of work. In 1753 James published a treatise of the scurvy, which he dedicated to George Anson, whose disastrous trip where he lost like 90 % of his men, Jyoti Asundi (38:52) 90 % of his crew. Aarati Asundi (38:55) Yeah, is what inspired James to become interested in scurvy in the first place. Jyoti Asundi (38:59) Wow. So it's dedicated to the guy... Aarati Asundi (39:02) Yes, it's dedicated to the captain of the ship. Jyoti Asundi (38:03) who is the who was the captain of this disaster. Aarati Asundi (39:08) Yes. In the book, James got the cause of scurvy completely wrong. Again, it's boiling down to the humors being imbalanced in the body. But he did advocate for the prevention of the disease by taking fresh citrus fruit and green vegetables onto ships. And in somewhat of a radical idea at the time, he argued that prevention of the disease would be better than trying to cure it. Surprise, surprise. Jyoti Asundi (39:35) What a radical concept. Prevention is better than cure is practically a adage at this point. Aarati Asundi (39:43) Yes. So he was advocating for better living conditions saying that sailors should be provided with adequate warmth, fresh air, and enough rest to help prevent the disease. Jyoti Asundi (39:57) Treat those sailors like human beings, then they might actually live through and 90 % of them may not die on a ship. That's quite a radical concept. All right. ⁓ Aarati Asundi (40:06) Yeah it's like, so we know obviously that none of those things would have directly prevented scurvy, but it would have made things a lot better. Jyoti Asundi (40:15) It would have made things a lot better. Just living in filth is that itself causes... it's not just the physical discomfort and the physical challenges, but also the mental decline that comes with that kind of, you know, the depression, the melancholy like they put it in those days. Aarati Asundi (40:37) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (40:38) You're already far away from your loved ones. You're already far away from family. Aarati Asundi (40:43) You've probably been gang pressed into this in the first place. Like you didn't want to do this. Jyoti Asundi (40:48) To begin with. Yeah, you didn't want to do this. You have been separated from people who love you. And now you're living in utter squalor. So yeah, maybe treating them like human beings might have helped a bit. Wow. Aarati Asundi (41:00) Yeah. So he publishes this treatise on scurvy. And you would think maybe that after this book is published, people would sit up and notice and be like, "Oh, we need to start taking lemon juice and like citrus fruit on our voyages!" But actually, no, this book got very little attention. And actually, there were some physicians who tried to refute James's work because it didn't agree with their own theories. And since James couldn't accurately pinpoint the cause of scurvy, people were less inclined to believe that he had come up with the right treatment. So for years, nothing really changed, even though he had figured this out. Jyoti Asundi (41:46) So he was right. He judged the political and the social climate quite accurately. He did his initial clinical trial, basically, that first clinical trial with 12 people who had scurvy and he kind of kept the whole results under wraps kind of thing. But even after he himself gained a lot of recognition and power basically because now he's a true physician, quote unquote. Aarati Asundi (42:15) Yes, he has the credentials now backing him. Jyoti Asundi (41:17) He has the credentials to back up whatever declaring his findings. Even then findings are being shunted aside. Aarati Asundi (42:26) Yeah. So nothing really changed. But James continued to work towards improving the health of sailors. In 1957, he published another paper called Jyoti Asundi (42:38) Sorry, sorry, I think you said the date wrong. Aarati Asundi (42:41) Oh, probably. Jyoti Asundi (42:42) You said 1957. Aarati Asundi (42:42) Yeah, I did. Thank I wrote 1957 too. It's 1757. Jyoti Asundi (42:48) Yes, okay. Aarati Asundi (42:49) Okay, so in 1757, he published another paper called Essay on the Most Effectual Means of Preserving the Health of Seamen in the Royal Navy, which he dedicated to Captain George Edgcumbe, who had let him run the experiment on the Salisbury. And again, he reiterated how he thought it was far more important and effective to prevent disease in sailors rather than try to cure it after they became sick. In addition to good hygiene and food, he said that new recruits should be quarantined from the rest of the sailors for a certain time period so that they wouldn't pass along any of land diseases to the crew. Jyoti Asundi (43:31) Yes. Wow. such fantastic concepts that are taken for granted now. Aarati Asundi (43:32) Yeah, he's really ahead of his time. Jyoti Asundi (43:35) Absolutely. A genius is never recognized in their own time. Aarati Asundi (43:38) Yeah, it's really sad. His ideas were so good. Jyoti Asundi (43:43) Could have saved so many lives if they took him seriously. Aarati Asundi (43:47) Yeah. So although his treatise on scurvy didn't really go anywhere, his passion for helping sailors was very clear. And so it's no surprise that in 1758, James was appointed to be chief physician to the Royal Naval Hospital at Hassler, where he treated sailors were returning from their time at seas with all sorts of illnesses. James continued to study these diseases and proposed treatments for them. In 1762, he published an idea for providing fresh water on board ships by distilling seawater. Jyoti Asundi (44:24) Wow. That's a good concept. Aarati Asundi (44:26) Yeah, so he had realized that when you boil seawater, the steam was clean and pure water. And if you could collect that, you would have fresh water. So he reasoned that sailors could use the sun to evaporate seawater and then collect it to drink, because this is a time when we can't take a stove really onto the ship. We don't have electricity. So he's like, let's use solar power. Jyoti Asundi (44:52) What a remarkable genius. He was so far ahead of his time. Aarati Asundi (44:57) Yeah. I had to do this actually in middle school. Our science teacher gave us two-liter soda bottle that was empty and gave us dirty water. And basically using that and a couple of... some scissors and some tape or something, like a few other things, we had to figure out how, if this was the only materials that we had on a deserted island, how would we make fresh water? And this basically was the solution. You put all the dirty water at the bottom of the bottle, and then create this contraption using the scissors, and you cut the bottle in half or something, and then you flip the top upside down. I don't remember exactly, but there's... Jyoti Asundi (45:40) So almost like you're creating a distilling device. Aarati Asundi (45:43) Yes, yes. And then you put it out in the sun, and the dirty water evaporates, and that clean water condenses. Jyoti Asundi (45:49) And then condenses at the top clean and then it goes.. Aarati Asundi (45:52) at the top and then drips down into a little cup. Jyoti Asundi (45:53) ...into a cleaner cup. Nice. So he came up with that idea too. Aarati Asundi (45:59) Yes, yeah. But like the key thing that he realized is that when the water evaporates, it's leaving behind all the salt and the dirt and the stuff that's evaporated is clean water. That's like the key that he realized. Yeah. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (46:14) Nice, that's right that he realized. Aarati Asundi (46:18) So it was a really good idea, but it didn't take hold until decades later in the early 1800s when a new type of stove was invented that could be used on ships and could be used to distill water. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (46:31) I see, I see. But solar power man that would have been... Aarati Asundi (46:35) I know! Jyoti Asundi (46:37) And you have patience because you're sitting there on the ship with nothing else going on. Aarati Asundi (46:41) Yeah, what else are you gonna do? Jyoti Asundi (46:43) Yeah rig up those contraptions up there in a corner somewhere and have clean water supplies. Aarati Asundi (46:48) Yeah, and it's doing it itself while you're doing other things. Jyoti Asundi (46:52) Yes, yes. Okay. Aarati Asundi (46:56) In 1763, he published two papers on fever and infection, which again talked preventative care, and treatments for sailors. And in 1771, he published "An Essay on Diseases Incidental to Europeans in Hot Climates", in which he talked about malaria, dysentery, heat stroke, and touches again a little bit on scurvy. And this is for all those like you were saying, those Europeans that are going into these tropical climates to wage warfare and colonize these... Jyoti Asundi (47:30) Yes. And colonize those areas to bring back the wealth into Europe. Yes. Aarati Asundi (46:33) Yeah. They're all having a tough time because Great Britain is cold and foggy, and now they're going into the tropics, and their bodies are not equipped to handle that. Jyoti Asundi (47:43) Yeah, they don't have the correct tools to deal with this. Yes. Aarati Asundi (47:49) Yeah, so he suggests that European sailors need to be allowed to acclimatize to tropical environments, as well as stay hydrated, clean, rested, and nourished. Jyoti Asundi (48:02) Unbelievable that these basic concepts were being put out as novel ideas at that time. But in addition, are being completely rejected and he's having a hard time convincing anybody in power to implement these concepts. Aarati Asundi (48:23) Yeah, it took a while for anyone to catch on. So it was very important work that he did for naval officers and physicians in general. And there were a few people who are like, hey, this is useful because I'm actually trying to treat these people who also have malaria or who also have these tropical diseases. This is someone who's actually studying it. So he was getting a bit of attention, but like, definitely not as much as he deserved. Jyoti Asundi (48:50) Yes, yes. Aarati Asundi (48:51) James eventually retired from the Royal Naval Hospital in 1783, and his oldest son, John, who had also become a physician by then, took over as chief physician. James died at the age of 77 in 1794 in Hampshire, England. And somewhat ironically, one year later, the Royal Navy finally got on board with James's theory that citrus juice could help prevent scurvy. So by this time, even though it wasn't medically accepted, enough Navy officers had noticed this correlation between drinking lemon juice and avoiding scurvy. Jyoti Asundi (49:23) I would like to think that as a naval officer, he met socially with a lot people in that field. And so he was able to maybe hold, I'm just imagining this in my own way, and he's having dinner parties for other naval officers and he's talking very logically, clearly and effectively ⁓ and convincingly this link to scurvy and lemon juice. So basically even though he's not able to say this is the cause of scurvy and this particular nutrient in lemon or orange citrus is the one that cures it, he has acquired to be able to convince these officers who are kind of coming through. Aarati Asundi (50:24) Yeah, and I imagine all the sailors he's treating at the hospital too, he's kind of like dropping this knowledge on them little by little like, you had scurvy? Let me tell you how to take care of it next time. Jyoti Asundi (50:36) So basically just like in a very you know, almost like a grassroots movement. Aarati Asundi (50:41) Yes. And I think by this time, people had been trying it and realizing that it was working. Jyoti Asundi (50:48) It did work. Yes. Aarati Asundi (50:48) It took a few years, but people were like, wait a minute. This is actually working. This is actually working. And so there was enough anecdotal evidence, I guess, within the naval officers and the sailors that were realizing themselves that, hey, this is actually working. Jyoti Asundi (51:08) Yes. Aarati Asundi (51:09) And so in 1794, the same year that James died, a ship called the Suffolk was making a three week long nonstop trip to India. And the senior officers demanded that lemon juice preserved in alcohol be provided to the crew. When the whole crew came back without any of them having contracted scurvy, the Royal Navy finally was like, hey, this might actually be.... Jyoti Asundi (51:39) There might be something to this. Aarati Asundi (51:40) Yeah, this might actually be a thing. Jyoti Asundi (51:44) Nice. Aarati Asundi (51:44) And so in 1795, one year after his death, the Admiralty issued an order that lemon juice should be provided on long sea voyages. Within a few years, Scurvy pretty much disappeared. By the early 1810s, John Lind, who is James' son, reported that he had only seen two cases of scurvy over a four-year period. Jyoti Asundi (52:12) From 90 % death to two cases. Excellent. Aarati Asundi (52:17) And so although James didn't originally come up with the idea of using citrus to prevent scurvy, and he didn't really understand why it worked, he is recognized for setting up this clinical trial and proving that it was the one that was working as opposed to all these other random treatments that were floating out there. Jyoti Asundi (52:40) Yes. Aarati Asundi (52:41) So because of this, his name is now written on the frieze of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 1952, citrus growers in California and Arizona funded the James Lind commemorative plaque, which is now at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. Jyoti Asundi (53:02) Oh nice. Aarati Asundi (53:04) And in 2004, the James Lind Alliance was formed. It is a nonprofit organization in the UK that helps ensure that the priorities of patients are taken into consideration by researchers. So that was like a really big thing in James's life, that he was constantly like, how do I make sailors lives better through my work? Jyoti Asundi (53:25) Better yes. Oh just fundamental, absolutely the basic decencies. Like you know, clean water, fresh food, greens, he was recommending taking greens along. Basic, basic concepts. Prevention is better than cure. All of these things. And they did have sayings in those days such as a stitch in time saved nine but and yet when it came to the human body, they did not make the same connections. Aarati Asundi (53:54) Yeah, they didn't think about it. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (53:56) They didn't think about it. It is interesting. Those times where all what we take for absolutely, we take for granted today. Those building blocks were actually being put in place in those days. Aarati Asundi (54:08) Yeah, the things we're taught as children, like eat a balanced diet, eat your fruits and veggies. You if you want to grow up big and strong, you have to eat all the food groups. Like you know? Yeah, all of, all of that stuff that we're taught as really young kids was just, you know, nonexistent back then. Jyoti Asundi (54:27) You know, even I'm thinking of India back in those times, we have these things where they have, what do you call it? ⁓ Myths almost, but these are all old wives tales kind of thing. Those are considered as old wives tales. Basically things like "Eat before dusk." And then, "one person has to serve everybody". And then once you eat, the food has to be finished and all the remaining food has to be put away, like given to the cows. Take fresh food every day. Oh and don't mix the serving ladles from dish A to dish B. When you think about it, they all were rooted back to the same hygiene and creating an environment where there is no infection and there is no festering vermin coming in. If one person is in charge of serving everybody, in today's times it is absolutely dismissed as being the most horrible because usually it was the woman who ended up serving while the rest of the family sat and ate and then she ate later. And so it is considered extremely backward today. But if you think about it more carefully, when one person is in charge of serving out the food, the main pot of food does not get cross contaminated back. Somebody talking or laughing loudly, the spit from their mouth does not just fly and land into the main pot of food because the lady is keeping the pot at a higher level and serving people and then she's... Aarati Asundi (56:10) Yeah, keeping it clean. Jyoti Asundi (56:12) Keeping it clean and hygienic, lack of vermin lack of infection. All these concepts are there, but they, like you said, it's exactly that people are not able to see the link very clearly as to, doing this causes this, doing this prevents this. And because of that, the whole, they basically throw the baby out with the bathwater. Aarati Asundi (56:36) Yeah, this also reminded me of the whole turmeric thing. When I was in grad school, there was this paper that came out that it was like, there's this compound in turmeric that's apparently very anti-inflammatory. And then turmeric started becoming this huge thing in medicine or in preventative care, like, if you eat turmeric, these hosts of inflammatory diseases. It's so good for your skin. It's so good for your immune system. And I'm like, yeah, we've known that for a long time. Like that's why turmeric is in everything we eat, basically. It is just there. And maybe we didn't know exactly what compound it was within the turmeric that was doing this, but we understood that it was good for you. And know, turmeric is just one example. We have that with like all the different Jyoti Asundi (57:24) Yes, absolutely. All those things that you find like in the markets now in the natural foods like turmeric and ashwagandha they are actually key ingredients in Ayurvedic medicine, which is a branch of medicine in India. Aarati Asundi (56:24) cumin and ginger and, you know, greens and vegetables and all of that. Jyoti Asundi (57:30) All those things that you find like in the markets now in the natural foods like turmeric and ashwagandha, they are actually key ingredients in Ayurvedic medicine, which is a branch of medicine in India. And that also has the same concept. Prevention is better than cure. Take it slowly. Identify the root cause. They also have the same thoughts, like the humours, various humours. But at the end of the day, even though they are not able to explain it clearly, there is validity to the connections that they have drawn empirically. Aarati Asundi (58:10) Yes, they have the right idea. We should listen to the ancient people more often. They knew what they were talking about sometimes. Jyoti Asundi (58:17) Yeah there is ancient wisdom that has been lost. Aarati Asundi (58:20) Yeah. So that's the story. Jyoti Asundi (58:23) What a fantastic story. Aarati Asundi (58:23) And I had no idea about all of this. I knew there was some connection between him and citrus and Scurvy, but I didn't realize he was the to set up a clinical trial. Jyoti Asundi (58:35) And like I said, for me it was interesting to note that colonization caused a lot of pain everywhere, not just to the colonized countries, but also to the countries who were doing the colonizing. Aarati Asundi (58:50) Yeah, no one wants this. Only those higher up people want it. No one else wants war. No one else wants to colonize anybody. Everyone just wants to live their life. Jyoti Asundi (59:00) Live and let live. Aarati Asundi (59:00) and it's these higher up people that are screwing us all over. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (59:03) A small bunch of very greedy people screw everybody else over. Aarati Asundi (59:07) Yeah, everyone else is just like, I just want to stay home. Like, you know, Jyoti Asundi (59:12) Yes, yes, be in my garden. Aarati Asundi (59:13) Live my life. Yeah, be happy. Yeah, I don't want to go conquering all these lands. I don't want to get on that ship. No, I don't. I really don't. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (59:20) Yes, yes, I really don't. In that case, I am going to be gang pressed and we're going to make you do whether you like it or not. Thank you, Aarati. This was a fantastic story. I love listening to your stories. Aarati Asundi (59:33) Yes, I really enjoyed researching it, so I'm glad you liked it. Thanks for listening! If you have a suggestion for a story we should cover or thoughts you want to share about an episode, reach out to us at smartteapodcast.com. You can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and blue sky @smartteapodcast and listen to us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And leave us a rating or comment. It helps us grow! New episodes are released every other Wednesday. See you next time!