The colonists of the northern part of America were sorely afflicted with scurvy. It is said that the French met with such high mortality during the severe winters in Canada, that they frequently debated the wisdom of abandoning this settlement. This was true also in regard to the English and their settlement in Newfoundland. Indeed, it was scurvy which forced the early settlers in Hudson Bay to discontinue their intentions of colonizing that region. In an essay published in the eighteenth century (1734), Bachstrom described an epidemic of scurvy which occurred in 1703 during the siege of Thorn, in Prussia, by the Swedes, which caused the death of 5000 of the garrison, in addition to a large number of the inhabitants. It is interesting to note that this epidemic took place in the middle of the summer, and not in the cold season. From this time on we meet with many descriptions of scurvy in connection with the wars at various periods. For instance, in the Russian armies, in the war between the Austrians and the Turks in 1720; in the English troops who had taken Quebec from the French in 1759; among the French soldiers in the army of the Alps in the spring of 1795. It is unnecessary to review these accounts in detail. This period is distinguished rather by the appearance of a great classic on Scurvy, the work of the English naval hygienist, Lind (1752). This book has intrinsic value to-day, and, at the time it appeared, served to crystallize the conception of scurvy, which had been stretched out of all proportions to include an ever-increasing conglomeration of clinical conditions. Scurvy had become the Alpha and Omega of professional routine, the catchword of the day, the asylum ignorantiæ of the practical man. Into this chaos, as Hirsch expresses it, "the first beams of light fell when Lind's classical work appeared."