Culture
These Victorian-Era Diseases Are Making a Comeback in a City Near You
Gout, scurvy, and rickets are back—and thankfully, largely preventable.
A recent Slate article recalled a patient who baffled doctors in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 2009, until a doctor named Eric Churchill cracked the case:
It turned out that the man had subsisted on nothing but white bread and cheese for years, and his low vitamin C levels were consistent with scurvy—“the same scurvy made famous by pirates and British sailors from the 1700s,” according to Slate.