How to Get and Treat Scurvy

When it comes to pirates, people only remember the cool things: rum, sodomy and the lash. But the current trend of “pirate chic” excludes the ugly side of life flying the dark flag on the high seas—scurvy. But don't worry, pirate enthusiast, you never need to suffer the fate of your peg-legged heroes.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

1. Scurvy--The Pirate Killer A good way to get scurvy is to not ingest vitamin C. In fact, it's the only way. Avoid citrus fruits and most vegetable. Vitamin C can be found in several foods, so you have to be careful to read labels. Scurvy is dangerously common among anorexics.
2. Identify your scurvy. Do you have bleeding gums, sunken eyes, dark, purplish skin, or anemia? These are all symptoms of scurvy.
3. Overcoming scurvy is relatively easy. Eat fruits high in vitamin C, like grapefruit, oranges, or even limes.
4. Drink pine-needle tea. Though most people don't know it, pine needles from pine trees are high in vitamin C. Making a tea out of them can offer you large amounts of the vitamin.
5. Take vitamin supplements. At any local grocery store, the vitamin you will find most readily available is vitamin C. It is in every Multi-vitamin and it can be bought individually as well.

Tips & Warnings

• Scurvy is extremely rare. You most certainly don't have scurvy.
• Don't attempt to be like a pirate and get scurvy--it is dangerous and really painful.