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James Lind's scurvy trial
May 1747· Event· Medicine & surgery
Well documentedSolid records, physical evidence or scientific consensus.
A 1747 shipboard experiment by Scottish naval surgeon James Lind showing citrus fruit cures scurvy; one of the first controlled clinical trials.
See it on the Technology & Medicine map →How it works
On HMS Salisbury in May 1747, Lind chose 12 sailors with similar cases of scurvy, a disease of bleeding gums and exhaustion that killed more sailors than battle. He split them into six pairs, each given a different daily remedy: cider, dilute sulfuric acid, vinegar, seawater, a spicy paste, or two oranges and a lemon. Within six days one citrus sailor was fit for duty. Lind published in 1753, but the Navy issued lemon juice only from 1795.
Why it mattered
Comparing matched groups given different treatments became the basis of modern clinical trials. Scurvy, later traced to lack of vitamin C, faded from navies.
Think of it like
Like testing six roof sealants on matched sections of the same roof, then seeing which one stops the leaks.
How we know
Lind's own account in A Treatise of the Scurvy (1753); Royal Navy records showing scurvy fell after lemon juice rations began in 1795; and vitamin C's identification in 1932.
Still unknown or debated
Lind did not fully trust his own result: he later favored a boiled citrus concentrate, which destroys vitamin C, and doubted scurvy had a single cause.
Connections (3)
▸James Lind's scurvy trial was explained by the Discovery of vitaminsWell documented
The connection
Lind gave 12 sailors with scurvy six different treatments; the two given oranges and lemons recovered fastest. He did not know why. The answer came with vitamins: scurvy is vitamin C deficiency, shown when Axel Holst and Theodor Frølich induced it in guinea pigs in 1907, and when Szent-Györgyi isolated the vitamin around 1928–32.
When and how
HMS Salisbury, at sea off England, May 1747; Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway, 1907; Szeged, Hungary, and Cambridge, England, 1928–32.
How we know
Lind's 1753 'Treatise of the Scurvy' records the trial; Holst and Frølich's guinea-pig studies and Szent-Györgyi's 1937 Nobel Prize confirmed the cause.
Debates and open questions
Why did the cure keep getting lost? The Royal Navy adopted lemon juice in 1795, later switched to weaker limes, and scurvy returned on 1870s polar expeditions.
▸James Lind's scurvy trial pioneered the controlled trial used for Polio vaccines (Salk, Sabin)Mostly agreed
The connection
Lind's 1747 trial gave groups of sick sailors different treatments side by side, so results could be compared fairly. The 1954 Salk field trial applied that logic at huge scale: many children got either vaccine or a look-alike placebo, with neither families nor doctors knowing which, and cases were counted afterward.
When and how
HMS Salisbury, 1747; the 1954 Francis Field Trial in the US, Canada and Finland, run from the University of Michigan by Thomas Francis Jr.
How sure are we?
The method's lineage is clear in medical history, though the polio trial's designers drew more on 20th-century statistics, such as Ronald Fisher's randomization, than on Lind directly.
Debates and open questions
Historians question calling Lind the inventor of trials: he tested only 12 men, and earlier comparisons exist. The polio trial's design itself was hotly argued in 1954.
▸James Lind's scurvy trial anticipated the randomised trial of Streptomycin and the cure for TBWell documented
The connection
Lind compared matched patients given different treatments. Two centuries later, Britain's Medical Research Council tested streptomycin against tuberculosis by assigning 107 patients to the drug or bed rest using random numbers, adding chance to Lind's comparison. Published in 1948, it is widely considered the first modern randomized controlled trial.
When and how
HMS Salisbury, 1747; the streptomycin trial ran in British hospitals from 1947, designed by statistician Austin Bradford Hill and published in the British Medical Journal in 1948.
How we know
Both trials are documented in their published reports; histories of clinical trials consistently trace this line from Lind to Bradford Hill.
Debates and open questions
Whether the 1948 trial was truly first is debated: a 1931 American tuberculosis study assigned its two groups by coin toss.