Black bones, gangrene and weeping: the unwelcome return of scurvy

With cases of scurvy appearing in Sydney and Zimbabwe, Jonathan Lamb looks at the history of a disease that was once thought to belong to the past

When doctors and patients realised that scurvy had reappeared, in separate outbreaks in Zimbabwe and Sydney recently, they were stunned. "I couldn't believe it," Penelope Jackson, one of the Sydney victims, recalled, "I thought, 'Hang on a minute, scurvy hasn't been around for centuries'."

Shame followed, as it often does with scurvy. "Does scurvy just affect developing countries?" asked Newsweek 24 of the Bulawayo emergency in Zimbabwe. "I couldn't believe you could be obese and malnourished," said Jackson. "We have sent a team to attend to it," the Bulawayo city council curtly announced, by way of a plenary reply to such questions about the disease.