Scott and Scurvy (2010)

idlewords.com

51 points·mbrubeck··6 comments

> But in the second half of the nineteenth century, the cure for scurvy was lost

Shit got lost in the olden days! No Google, no Wikipedia ...

Mozart only learned about J. S. Bach a few years before his death. Amazingly, he spent his entire career ignorant about the important works of his great predecessor.

Today, thanks to modern information technology, the only professionals who remain ignorant about prior work in their field are software developers.

>the only professionals who remain ignorant about prior work in their field are software developers

Throwing that much salt will be useful for my journey on the S.S. Reinventing The Wheel, thanks!

This has been posted on HN 9(!) times, but I still enjoy rereading it.

For more discussion, this posting had the most comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1174912

It pleases me every time my article about how knowledge gets forgotten is innocently reposted here.

The whole scurvy related set of anecdotes are quite coloured by language bias. German folklore contains a different set of anecdotes regarding scurvy, with the solution based on sauerkraut iso citrus fruits.

Totally unrelated, but I have seen the same thing in mathematics. The same theorem being named to different mathematicians depending on the language in which you learn the theorem (French or English or Russian)

If only the british had adopted sauerkraut or other kind of acidic preserve high in Vit C as the cure for scurvy, Scott's mission might have been less of a failure.

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