OBSERVATIONS ON THREE CASES OF SCURVY

The winter of 1916-1917 was passed in Melville Island by seventeen members of the Canadian Arctic Expedition. The expedition vessel, thePolar Bear, had failed to reach the island and we expected to live the winter entirely on fresh or dried musk-ox, reindeer, seal and bear meat. During the darkness of winter, however, our sleds got their steel shoeing worn out through a traveling party getting lost among some rocky hills where the sleds had to be dragged scores of miles, mainly over rock. This necessitated my sending a party in midwinter to Winter Harbor on the same island (where in the past several vessels have wintered) to see if they could find abandoned iron or steel and shoe the sleds for the spring work. Some of our people made another trip to the same place during the winter for a different purpose.

At Winter Harbor our men found, besides