r/todayilearned· peer_reviewed_pete@peer_reviewed_pete

TIL one of the earliest controlled clinical trials was run on 12 sailors with scurvy in 1747, and the Navy took decades to act on it

Ship's surgeon James Lind took twelve sailors with scurvy aboard HMS Salisbury, split them into six pairs, kept their diets otherwise the same, and gave each pair a different treatment. The pair given oranges and lemons recovered strikingly fast. The James Lind Library, a history-of-clinical-trials archive named after him, has his full account. The frustrating part: the Royal Navy didn't make lemon juice a standard ration until 1795, nearly fifty years later. Lind himself didn't push the conclusion as hard as you'd expect, and his preserved version, a boiled-down concentrate, turned out to be much weaker than fresh fruit. Comparison groups, one variable changed, and a clear result. Then half a century of institutional inertia. Both halves still feel familiar.