1870 COMMITTEE ON OUTBREAK OF SCURVY. 257 



to all former experience on similar service. It appears 

 in the evidence taken before the Committee that Sir 

 Leopold M'Clintock in all his varied Arctic journeys, 

 extending over some thousands of miles, never carried 

 lime-juice or considered it necessary. Certainly the 

 evidence of Dr. Kae in regard to his own remarkable 

 journeys and his long experience as an officer of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company in Arctic America does not 

 justify the conclusions arrived at by the Committee. 



'For myself I must say that, during some seven 

 months passed on the ice at different times, and with, 

 perhaps, larger parties than any one person ever had 

 the charge of, my crews never used lime-juice. The 

 same may be said of the early and extended sledging 

 parties of all previous expeditions. Lime-juice was 

 undoubtedly used by some of the parties which made 

 short excursions in moderate temperatures; but there 

 remains the fact that many previous parties exposed to 

 the same temperatures and pretty much the same 

 hardships as those experienced by the late Expedition, 

 and for considerably longer periods, did not use lime- 

 juice, and were practically exempt from* scurvy, or the 

 cases which did occur were so few in number, and of 

 so mild a character, that opinion actually differs at the 

 present time among medical men as to Avhether they 

 were cases of scurvy or not. 



c The fact is that it has always been regarded as 

 unnecessary and impossible to administer frozen lime- 

 juice to sledge crews, and in the Arctic regions it is 

 always frozen during the month of April and the greater 

 part of May ; at any rate the expedient has never been 

 tried. 



vol. I. S 



