226 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



had such natural gifts that they adapted themselves to 

 northern conditions, but in the main the Klondikers were 

 hopeless incompetents. It seems difficult now to believe 

 how many of them found a way of dying by drowning 

 or some other accident or by starving or committing 

 suicide. Many died of scurvy. 



For the scurvy they were not individually to blame, 

 for their ignorance of how easily it can be prevented 

 was merely the ignorance of the medical profession oi 

 that day who supposed that scurvy could be prevented 

 only by the drinking of lime juice or the eating of vege- 

 tables and fruits. We know now that scurvy can be 

 cured by an underdone steak no less than by a raw potato 

 or an orange. We know also that while uncooked foods, 

 whether fruits, vegetables or meat, are good antidotes 

 for scurvy, they lose their power on being cooked. But 

 in their ignorance the prospectors used to eat mainly 

 the beans and bacon and other things they had brought 

 with them. A few of them only had the luck or skill 

 to kill game, in which case they ordinarily overcooked 

 the meat until it no longer had any value as a preven- 

 tive or cure for scurvy. When they actually became ill 

 with the disease some of them took the boughs of the 

 spruce trees, considering them a vegetable and a possible 

 cure for scurvy. They probably would have been a cure 

 had they been eaten raw in the manner of a salad, but 

 the miners ordinarily put them in pots and boiled them 

 for hours, making a decoction which they called spruce 

 tea. This was drunk without any beneficial effect so far 

 as the scurvy was concerned, and many who had escaped 

 drowning in the rivers or hunger on the portages died of 

 this loathsome disease. 



On my way back from the fire that had led me half 



