Edward L. Atkinson - Controversy: Scurvy

Controversy: Scurvy

Atkinson was the only medically qualified officer to see the bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers. The extent of any detailed examination he made is not known, and no medical report on the causes of death was ever published. However, he reportedly told Cherry-Garrard emphatically that there was no evidence of scurvy in the bodies.

The truth of this statement has been queried by Scott's detractors, on grounds which are largely circumstantial. For example: Lt Evans was seriously affected by scurvy on his return journey, so why not others? Scurvy had affected previous Antarctic expeditions, including Scott's with the Discovery, and dietary provision had not improved much meantime. The progressive weakening of the polar party on the return, and of Edgar Evans in particular, sounded like scurvy symptoms. And of course Atkinson's denials may have been intended to preserve the reputation of the expedition – scurvy carried with it a sort of stigma. These are emotional rather than factual arguments, but have not prevented apparently authoritative statements such as Huntford's: "By now Scott was almost certainly in the early stages of scurvy". He says much the same about Edgar Evans

The growth in scientific understanding of the nature and causes of scurvy in the years after 1912 may have helped fuel the assumption that Scott and his companions had been affected by it. Even Raymond Priestley of the expedition's scientific staff, who had at one time denied the incidence of scurvy was, fifty years later, beginning to think differently. However, despite the lack of understanding of the causes of the disease that existed in 1912, the symptoms were well-known, and Solomon and Fiennes both point out that it is unthinkable that so scrupulous a scientific observer and physician as Edward Wilson would have made no mention at all of any sign of scurvy in the polar party, had it existed, in his journals and various letters.