In the year 1600 four sailing vessels left England for the East Indies. The sailors on three of these ships did not receive lime juice, whereas those on the fourth received their daily quota. The men of the first three ships suffered severely from scurvy, but those on the fourth escaped. In an excellent work on "Scorvey," published in 1685, Harvey wrote: "Wherefore most acids, especially spirit of salt marine, juice of sorrel, limons, citrons, etc., are so deservedly extolled in some scorbutic distempers and seconded with good success." Thus we see that even at this early date it was taken for granted that citrous fruits possessed virtue in curing scurvy. Bachstrom (Observationes circa Scorbutum, 1734) evidently was well-acquainted with the antiscorbutic value of scurvy grass, and relates the story of a sailor severely disabled from scurvy who was put ashore to perish on Greenland, and crawled on the ground, grazed on scurvy grass like a beast of the field, and was able to return home perfectly recovered. (Cited from Lind.) The credit for forcing a general acceptance of the antiscorbutic value of fresh food belongs to Lind. He did not, however, have an easy task, and in 1747, in order to convince those who still were skeptical, he resorted to an experiment on human beings. Twelve patients in his hospital were given the same diet, except that some received sea-water in addition to their dietary, others vinegar, or elixir of sulphuric acid, or a daily portion of cider, or oranges and one lemon daily. The last two groups, as we should expect, recovered quickly; one man who received cider improved, but in no other case was any alleviation noted. Lind extols the value of lemons and oranges, of berries, of sour cabbage, of cider, and of all fresh fruits and vegetables. In spite of the fact, however, that Lind's teaching was based on an experience with thousands of patients suffering from scurvy in the naval hospital, his ideas did not take root. It required an event which came directly under the official eye to bring about radical changes in the diet of the sailors. In 1795 the English Fleet suffered from a severe epidemic of scurvy, which was finally controlled by giving the sailors fresh vegetables and fruit. This therapeutic result was so convincing that thenceforth a daily ration of lime juice was ordered for the sailors and a regular issue provided for the navy. This marks the cessation of scurvy as a scourge of the British navy. From this time the disease appeared only sporadically. The sharp decrease in the incidence can be appreciated by Budd's statement that 1457 cases of scurvy were admitted to the Royal Naval Hospital in 1780, whereas in 1810 an English physician reported that in the seven preceding years he had not treated a single patient in this hospital suffering from scurvy. In another marine hospital, between the years 1806 and 1810, only two cases of scurvy were admitted.