APPENDIX. 
clxxii 
I* 
happened in the case of Captain Sabine’s servant, that such an accident 
ought to occur. 
Although the winter was commenced with full confidence in the abundance 
and efficacy of our resources, we could not be quite indifferent to the 
many examples on record of the fatality that had attended most of those 
adventurers, who either by accident or in hopes of commercial profit, had 
wintered in those climates. With these facts before us, it would have been 
too much, however sanguine we might have been, to have expected a total 
exemption from scurvy, and many evils arose during the winter favourable to 
its production, requiring unceasing vigilance to watch and oppose. 
Among the causes which have been considered most active in generating 
this destructive disease, are to be noticed the following, viz., a diet deficient 
in quantity or quality ; a cold, damp, and impure air ; uncleanliness, habits 
of idleness; mental disquietude; and in short, whatever is capable of 
producing debility. The absence of a due quantity of acescent vegetable 
food is always the exciting cause. 
In the sea-scurvy, the salted provisions used by the seamen have been held 
by many to be the most constant cause predisposing to the disease, depend- 
ing as some think, on the nutritive parts of the meat being dissolved, and 
lost in the brine ; or, according to others, owing to a chemical combination 
between the salt and the animal fibre, destructive, of its nutritious properties. 
The present unfrequency of the disease in His Majesty’s service may induce 
a doubt whether the rations of the seamen, modified as they are at this time, 
are capable of producing such a predisposition, without the co-operation of 
some other powerful remote cause. 
In the equipment of the Expedition, however, every measure that appeared 
conducive to the improvement of the antiscorbutic qualities of the provisions 
was adopted. A large quantity of the meats preserved by Messrs. Donkin 
and Co. without salt, as well as of their vegetable and concentrated soups was 
embarked, and placed at the discretion of Captain Parry, who, by the substi- 
tution of them in lieu of proportional quantities of salt beef, greatly 
