"The knowledge that consuming foods containing vitamin C is a cure for scurvy has been repeatedly forgotten and rediscovered into the early-20th century...February 1601, Captain James Lancaster... conducted an experiment...One ship's crew received routine doses of lemon juice while the other three ships did not... the non-treated ships started to contract scurvy, with many dying as a result."
"It has been estimated by researchers that during the Age of Exploration (between 1500 and 1800), scurvy killed at least two million sailors...During the 18th century, scurvy killed more British sailors than wartime enemy action."
"1747... James Lind formally demonstrated that scurvy could be treated by supplementing the diet with citrus fruit, in one of the first controlled clinical experiments reported in the history of medicine...However, the experiment and its results occupied only a few paragraphs in a work that was long and complex and had little impact..."
"1795, it was reported that the Suffolk had arrived in India after a four-month voyage without a trace of scurvy...The effect was immediate. Fleet commanders clamoured also to be supplied with lemon juice...This led to a remarkable health improvement among the sailors and consequently played a critical role in gaining the advantage in naval battles"
"Lauchlin Rose patented a method used to preserve citrus juice without alcohol in 1867, creating a concentrated drink known as Rose's lime juice...provide a daily "lime or lemon juice"... to sailors to prevent scurvy... hence the term "limey"...for British sailors"
Having long-term storage of vitamin C will resurface in the future of space exploration. It would seem that vitamin C pills degrade very slowly and are much easier to transport than other sources of vitamin C. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/54559/are-there-any-long-term-storable-sources-of-vitamin-c
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