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Darwin Awards
2013 Slush Pile

This item was recently submitted by a reader.
Should I include it in the archive?
Vote to tell me what *you* think!

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2013 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance

William Stark, a Scottish physician and friend of Benjamin Franklin, starved to death in 1770 trying to find a cure to scurvy. People died in the thousands of scurvy then, especially sailors. Admittedly, illness and death due to malnutrition was quite common these days anyway.

Medicine had already understood, that scurvy was "curable" by something that was not common on sailing ships, as sailors miraculously became better after a few days back on the land. But nobody had an idea, what this obscure substance would be.

The daring experiment Stark took out on himself is fairly well told on wikipedia http://goo.gl/tY1pct and even better by Bill Bryson in "At Home".

Why the heck didn't Stark pause his experiment later or even regularly, as he did after the first occurrence of scurvy symptons? Instead he chose to starve to death getting nothing! He had not reached any conclusive progress, when he died. His treatment of that deadly disease was as stupid and careless as "experimenting" with a lion or a big alligator by simply approaching it with no precautions at all. He was a physician!

Another Scottish doctor, James Lind, found a much more sophisticated approach to the problem in what came to be one of the first scientifically controlled experiments in the history of medicine when he fed six groups of scorbutic sailors different food. Those eating oranges and lemons got better. Ironically, that clever experiment was made some 20 years _before_ Stark's fatal attempt and unfortunately - for him but even more so for legions of sailors – food rich in vitamin C was generally established as a preventive measure against scurvy not before the end of the century: http://goo.gl/p0tgLV. Stark's detailed notes on his diet and condition later helped identifying the mysterious critical ingredient in oranges, garlic and sauerkraut, vitamin C. So in the end he at least helped creating a powerful meme, the information that L-ascorbinc acid prevents humans from developing the condition of scurvy. Starks death, however, was completely unnecessary.

--- That's a nice story found and well told originally by Bill Bryson. http://goo.gl/8lLNrL. I can't provide the exact quote, since I have the German edition of “At Home” and the corresponding original page unfortunately is not on gBooks.

Submitted on 09/06/2013

Submitted by: Guido
Reference:

Copyright © 2013 DarwinAwards.com

>> Moderator Scores <<

Bruce said:
Definitely Toss: No Self-Selection
His Wikipedia page says "his detailed record keeping indicated the importance of vitamin C to later researchers." And given that he lived in the mid 1700's and a lot has been learned scientifically between then and now I just don't see his death as anything that's Darwin worthy. I also just don't see this as all that amusing a story either. Thanks just the same.


Candi said:
Definitely Toss: No Self-Selection
What Bruce said.


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