These ideas received wide and influential backing, when James Cook set off to circumnavigate the world (1768–1771) in HM Bark Endeavour, malt and wort were top of the list of the remedies he was ordered to investigate. The others were beer, Sauerkraut (a good source of vitamin C) and Linds rob. The list did not include lemons.Cook did not lose a single man to scurvy, and his report came down in favour of malt and wort, although it is now clear that the reason for the health of his crews on this and other voyages was Cooks regime of shipboard cleanliness, enforced by strict discipline, as well as frequent replenishment of fresh food and greenstuffs. Another beneficial rule implemented by Cook was his prohibition of the consumption of salt fat skimmed from the ships copper boiling pans, then a common practice elsewhere in the Navy. In contact with air, the copper formed compounds that prevented the absorption of vitamins by the intestines.The first major long distance expedition that experienced virtually no scurvy was that of the Spanish naval officer Alessandro Malaspina, 1789–1794. Malaspinas medical officer, Pedro González, was convinced that fresh oranges and lemons were essential for preventing scurvy. Only one outbreak occurred, during a 56-day trip across the open sea. Five sailors came down with symptoms, one seriously. After three days at Guam all five were healthy again.
Psychasthenia was a psychological disorder characterized by phobias, obsessions, compulsions, or excessive anxiety. The term is no longer in psychiatric diagnostic use, although it still forms one of the ten clinical subscales of the popular self-report personality inventories MMPI and MMPI-2. Signs and symptoms
The MMPI subscale 7 describes psychasthenia as akin to obsessive-compulsive disorder, and as characterised by excessive doubts, compulsions, obsessions, and unreasonable fears. The psychasthenic has an inability to resist specific actions or thoughts, regardless of their maladaptive nature. In addition to obsessive-compulsive features, the scale taps abnormal fears, self-criticism, difficulties in concentration, and guilt feelings. The scale assesses long-term (trait) anxiety, although it is somewhat responsive to situational stress as well. The psychasthenic has insufficient control over their conscious thinking and memory, sometimes wandering aimlessly and/or forgetting what they were doing. Thoughts can be scattered and take significant effort to organize, often resulting in sentences that do not come out as intended, therefore making little sense to others. The constant mental effort and characteristic insomnia induces fatigue, which worsens the condition. Symptoms can possibly be greatly reduced with concentration exercises and therapy, depending on whether the condition is psychological or biological. History
The term "psychasthenia" is historically associated primarily with the work of Pierre Janet, who divided the neuroses into the psychasthenias and the hysterias, discarding the term "neurasthenia" since it implied a neurological theory where none existed.