Cartier, Jacques

Cars, gasoline engine oils for, 15 227-232. See also Automobile entries Automotive entries Carsolchromic materials, 22 708t Cartier, Jacques, 25 746 Cartonic, molecular formula and structure, 5 181t... 

The first clues to the treatment of scurvy occurred in 1535—1536 when Jacques Cartier, on advice from Newfoundland Indians, fed his crew an extract from spmce tree needles to cure an epidemic. Various physicians were recommending the use of citms fmits to cure scurvy in the mid-sixteenth century. Two hundred years later, in 1753, it was proved by Dr. James Lind, in his famous clinical experiment, that scurvy was associated with diet and caused by lack of fresh vegetables. He also demonstrated that oranges and lemons were the most effective cure against this disease. In 1753, inM Treatise on the Scurvy[ Lind pubhshed his results and recommendations (7). Eorty-two years later, in 1795, the British Navy included lemon juice in seamen s diets, resulting in the familiar nickname "limeys" for British seamen. Evidence has shown that even with undefined scorbutic symptoms, vitamin C levels can be low, and can cause marked diminution in resistance to infections and slow healing of wounds. 

In the Americas, lack of a written record makes dating the origins of Native American medicine difficult. European explorers wrote about some experiences. In the winter of 1535-1536, ships of Jacques Cartier were stuck in ice near Montreal. Scurvy occurred in the crew and a local chief told of a tree that produced a juice and sap that cured the disease. An extract of the leaves and bark was made and it cured the scurvy in the crew. Early explorers in Peru wrote... 

FIGURE 1 Iroquois showing Jacques Cartier how to make cedar tea as a remedy for scurvy. 

In the 1990s, he donated his collection of several thousand watermarks to the Virginia Technical University, where the Gravell Archives are named in his honor. He asked me to present a paper describing his work at the Jacques Cartier Conference on Digitalization of Documents in Lyon, France, in 1999 (Actes du colloque Vers une nouvelle erudition numerisation et recherche en histoire du livre, Rencontres Jacques Cartier, Lyon, Dec. 1999). 

Primates are unable to synthesize ascorbic acid and hence must acquire it from their diets. The importance of ascorbate becomes strikingly evident in scurvy. Jacques Cartier in 1536 gave a vivid description of this dietary deficiency disease, which afflicted his men as they were exploring the Saint Lawrence River ... 

Like their English rivals, when the French laid claim to North America in the sixteenth century, they too envisioned the New World as a vast repository of naval supplies, especially hemp and timber. These hopes were fuelled by reports from her early explorers such as Jacques Cartier who, like many others, had mistaken Acnida cannabina for Cannabis sativa. 

Acknowledgements Financial support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada), the Centre Jacques Cartier, and the Commission Permanente de Cooperation Franco-Quebecoise is gratefully acknowledged. 

One of the earliest accounts of cures of scurvy is to be found in Hakluyt s Principal Navigations which was published in 1600. This was referring to events which took place on Jacques Cartier s expedition to Newfoundland in 1535. 

Ans. One of the earliest documentations of vitamin deficiency appears in the journals of Jacques Cartier, who explored North America in 1535. He described a disease which came to be known as scurvy. It was manifested in his sailors as terrible skin disorders accompanied by tooth loss. It took another 200 years before a British physician found he could cure scurvy by addition of lemons to the diet. The antiscurvy vitamin was isolated in 1932, and given the name of vitamin C. 

The first major vitamin to be recognised in terms of its influence was vitamin C. This emerged as it was realised that scurvy, a disease of sailors in the days of journeys of many months in sailing ships, was the result of a severely restricted diet, and that it could be relieved or prevented with plant-derived material. Jacques Cartier gave his men a decoction of pine needles James Cook took the simpler option of taking citrus fruit on board and to this day Americans refer to British servicemen as limeys . It was another 150 years before the actual substance responsible for these remarkable effects was isolated from another rich source, green peppers, and identified. Indeed the word vitamin was only introduced in 1912. 

Ozonolysis of VOC recent studies by matrix isolation FTIR spectroscopy, in Pollution Atmospherique, Quatriemes entretiens du Centre Jacques Cartier sur Reactivite Chimique de L Atmosphere et Mesure des Polluants Atmospheriques, Grenoble 1990, Special Issue 33 (1991) 29-44. 

During the winter of 1535 in Canada, Jacques Cartier, the daring explorer who laid claim to Canada for France, recorded in his log that the lives of many of his men dying of scurvy were saved "almost overnight," when they learned from the Indians that drinking a brew made from the growing tips of pine or spruce trees cured and prevented the malady. (It is now known that the brew contained vitamin C.)... 

Fig. V-39. Friendly Huron-lroauois Indians shown In Quebec in 1535, (1) making a broth from pine branches, and (2) serving It to Jacques Cartier and his men to cure scurvy. (Reprodu( with permission of Nutrition Today, P.O. Box 1829, Annapolis, MD, 21404, 1979)...

Dunlop H.M., Benmalek M., Role and caracterization of surfaces in the aluminium industry, 9e Entretiens du Centre Jacques Cartier, Ecole polytechnique de Montreal, 2 octobre 1996. 

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