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This text analyzes the medical reports of doctor Murillo de Campos on an expedition by the Rondon Commission to the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso in 1911. Originally published as a scientific article, the report begins by detailing the nosological profile in the places visited and the customs of the inhabitants. It then presents a detailed fieldwork report into the healing practices of the Bororo indigenous people in eastern Mato Grosso. An investigative approach is employed to describe the therapeutic methods used by the healers, particularly the extensive use of medicinal plants. The analysis demonstrates that Campos acted as an intermediary between medical knowledge and Bororo healing practices.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw dramatic new developments in climatic medicine, particularly the institutionalisation of thinking about tropical hygiene. There were also more limited efforts to understand how hygiene theories should be applied in a polar environment. Studying the British National Antarctic Expedition (1901-1904), led by Robert Falcon Scott, helps us understand how these practices had both similarities and differences from applications of hygiene in other contexts. The expedition offers unique insights into debates about hygiene, environment, and health because of the important, and well documented, role that medics, naval officers and scientists played in organising logistical arrangements for the journey to Antarctica. In analysing the writings of expedition members and organisers, this paper examines the ways that the universal tools of hygiene theories were applied and developed in a polar environment. Many of the most acute threats seemed to come not from the outside environment but from the explorers' supplies and equipment. There was general agreement on many issues. Yet the expedition's organisers, medics and leadership had numerous arguments about the best way to preserve or restore health. These disagreements were the product of both competing medical theories about the cause of disease and the importance of embodied (and somewhat subjective) observations in establishing the safety of foods, atmospheres and environments in this period.

The management of the coronavirus pandemic required huge worldwide vaccination efforts. In this endeavour, healthcare workers faced the twofold challenge of reaching remote areas, and persuading people to take the vaccine. As it happens, this is nothing new in the history of medicine. Health workers may indeed continue to take inspiration from Francisco Xavier Balmis, a Spanish physician of the 19th century who realised the importance of Jenner's vaccine against smallpox, and led a successful expedition to administer the vaccines in the Spanish colonial possessions of the Western hemisphere and Asia. This article presents a biographical sketch of Balmis, focusing on his expedition.

Henry Bence Jones is among the esteemed physicians of the mid-19th century. Eighteen biographical medical journal articles, published between 1952 and 2021, describe his life and contributions to medicine. Unmentioned, however, is an island in the waters of Shepherd Bay in northern Canada, now Nunavut, designated Bence Jones Island, by the British explorer John Rae in 1854. Rae had sailed from Great Britain to the regions extending north of Hudson's Bay in search of information regarding Sir John Franklin and 133 other officers and men who departed from the Kingdom of Great Britain in two ships in 1845 to search for the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean; they disappeared. In anticipation of Rae's voyage to search for evidence of Franklin's expedition, Bence Jones provided a special preparation of tea that could be drunk cold, if necessary. It was so meaningful to the crew of Rae's ship that it resulted in Rae naming an island near Boothia Isthmus in Shepherd Bay in recognition of this contribution to the contentment of his men under arduous conditions and in acknowledgment of Bence Jones's professional standing, upon which we comment. Rae's report of his voyage in 1855, cited herein, mentioned the island and showed its position on a map of the region. We have located it on a current map of the waterways and landmasses of Nunavut using Google Earth Pro by showing its position at the approximate coordinates of latitude and longitude cited by Rae.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was one of the most distinguished German scientists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His fame came chiefly from his extensive explorations in South America and his eminence as a plant naturalist. He attempted to climb the inactive volcano Chimborazo in Ecuador, which was thought to be the highest mountain in the world at the time, and he reached an altitude of about 5,543 m, which was a record height for humans. During the climb, he had typical symptoms of acute mountain sickness, which he correctly attributed to the low level of oxygen, and he was apparently the first person to make this connection. His ability as a naturalist enabled him to recognize the effect of high altitude on the distribution of plants, and by comparing his observations on Chimborazo with those in the European Alps and elsewhere, he inferred that the deleterious effects of high altitude were universal. During his return trip to Europe, he called on President Thomas Jefferson in Washington, where he was given a warm reception, and discussed conservation issues. He then returned to Paris, where he produced 29 volumes over a period of 31 years describing his travels. Here the effects of high altitude on the distribution of plants compared with animals are briefly reviewed. Following Humboldt's death in 1859, there was extensive coverage of his contributions, but curiously, his fame has diminished over the years, and inexplicably, he now has a lower profile in North America.

This Lessons from History article about the naming of the extreme altitude "Death Zone" explores the historical mountaineering and medical literature relevant to the topic. Swiss alpinist and radiologist Edouard Wyss-Dunant (1897-1983) authored several reports and books about expeditions to arctic regions, deserts, and the Himalaya. Encouraged by the success of a Swiss expedition to the Garhwal Himalaya in 1947, Wyss-Dunant joined his fellow climbers from Geneva on a 1949 expedition to several peaks in the Kanchenjunga region. Wyss-Dunant was then invited to lead the spring 1952 Swiss Everest expedition. Despite this being the first Swiss attempt on Everest and on an untried route, Raymond Lambert and Tenzing Norgay nearly summitted Everest from the Nepal side. Wyss-Dunant earned mountaineering immortality by coining the phrase the Death Zone during the expedition's foray into the upper regions of Everest. Wyss-Dunant went on to become a president of the Swiss Alpine Club and the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation. His writings and that of others provide an evocative supporting narrative to illustrate some of the problems of living (or dying) at extreme altitude., (Copyright © 2020 Wilderness Medical Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

In May 1845 HMS Terror and HMS Erebus left England under the command of Sir John Franklin to find the Northwest Passage linking the north Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The ships had been specially equipped for arctic conditions with central heating, auxiliary steam engines and reinforced steel bows to cut through the ice, however, despite these modern additions neither the vessels nor any of the 129 crew members would ever return. Recently the wrecks of the ships have been located in the waters around King William Island, Nunavut, Canada. Numerous theories have been advanced to explain the deaths that involve lead poisoning, scurvy and zinc deficiency. It is most likely, however, that the deaths were the result of multiple factors such as starvation, hypothermia, infection and general physical and mental decline. Cannibalism occurred but whether this involved the use of already dead sailors or the culling of the weak for food is not determinable. The essential point is that the crews were trapped in the Arctic, many thousands of miles from their homes and families, with dwindling food supplies and minimal chances of rescue.

The corvette Vital de Oliveira was the first Brazilian Navy vessel to circumnavigate the world, from 1879 to 1881. One of the items that concerned its captain, Júlio de Noronha, in his trip report was the food supply, which was further reinforced in the medical report for the expedition written by the head surgeon, Galdino Magalhães. This concern was notable due to the high numbers of sailors who sickened and died during the trip, which according to both reports may have been caused by shortages of certain foods. This article discusses the relationship between food and health in the crew, as well as the relationship between this journey and the implementation of a new ration table that took effect in 1886.

The 250-year anniversary of Cook's landfall at Botany Bay on 28 April 1770, approximately half way through a global circumnavigation, was an extraordinary maritime undertaking. An enterprise of astronomy, cartography, cultural-botanical documentation and revelation achieved without a death from infectious disease and only 10 mild cases of scurvy in a ship's company of 95 men. The subsequent homeward journey was far less endurable, marked by shipwreck, unforeseen prolonged delays and fatal epidemics of flux and malaria. Mild scurvy within a handful of souls in a crew experimenting with several putative antiscorbutics, yet at voyage's end the precise treatment of scurvy remained enigmatic., (© 2020 Royal Australasian College of Physicians.)

Archibald McLean qualified in Sydney in 1910 and in the following year joined Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911-1914). He took a full part in the expedition and was forced to stay an extra year when Mawson failed to return to the base before the ship left. During this time he edited the expedition newspaper, The Adelie Blizzard. His writing impressed Mawson who invited him to work on the book about the expedition. This necessitated visiting England to liaise with publishers and promote the book. He was in England when the First World War broke out and he was commissioned in the RAMC and sent to France. He was invalided out of the army in 1916 and returned to Australia where he obtained his MD for his research in the Antarctic. Then he joined the Australian Army Medical Corps and returned to France where he won the Military Cross and he also suffered gassing. During the war, he developed TB and was unwell when he returned to Australia.

Tick-borne encephalitis virus is the etiological agent of a severe human disease transmitted by hard ticks. It occurs in large parts of eastern, central, and western Asia and in Europe with thousands of human cases each year. Here, the discovery of the virus by Soviet scientists in the late 1930s in the Far East is described. The pioneering work involved with this discovery, which resulted in great scientific and epidemiological achievement, was undertaken under the most difficult conditions, and some of the scientists and their technical assistants paid for it with their health and even their lives. This paper briefly outlines the steps on the way that elucidated the basic etiology and eco-epidemiology of the disease, and does not omit that, as one result of the expeditions and the political situation in the former Soviet Union at that time, some scientists were sent to prison., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.)

Making use of a source previously unknown to historians, this article sheds new light on the British expedition to the Sandwich Islands to observe the 1874 transit of Venus. This source, a series of caricature drawings that follow the expedition from departure to return, gives insight into expeditionary culture and the experience of a previously unremarked member of this astronomical expedition, Evelyn J.W. Noble, a career officer of the Royal Marine Artillery. It also reveals overlapping military, scientific and masculine identities, developed in dialogue with, and often deliberately subverting, more public accounts. The article explores this unique source as a product of naval, imperial and expeditionary cultures; as a contribution to the wide textual and visual culture that surrounded the transit expeditions; and as a series of drawings that united the expedition members through the use of humour and irony, by differentiating the group from others they encountered, and by reflecting or rejecting ideas about the nature of scientific work and personae. The artist represented himself not as a serving officer but as part of a (mostly) united group, dedicated to but humorously self-deprecating about their contribution to the scientific effort.

In 1859, Harvard botanist Asa Gray (1810-1888) published an essay of what he called "the abstract of Japan botany." In it, he applied Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory to explain why strong similarities could be found between the flora of Japan and that of eastern North America, which provoked his famous debate with Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) and initiated Gray's efforts to secure a place for Darwinian biology in the American sciences. Notably, although the Gray-Agassiz debate has become one of the most thoroughly studied scientific debates, historians of science remain unable to answer one critical question: How was Gray able to acquire specimens from Japan? Making use of previously unknown archival materials, this article scrutinizes the institutional, instrumental, financial, and military settings that enabled Gray's collector, Charles Wright (1811-1885), to travel to Japan, as well as examine Wright's collecting practices in Japan. I argue that it is necessary to examine Gray's diagnosis of Japan's flora and the subsequent debate about it from the viewpoint of field sciences. The field-centered approach not only unveils an array of historical significances that have been overshadowed by the analytical framework of the Darwinian revolution and the reception of Darwinism, but also places a seemingly domestic incident in a transnational context.

The current work presents the results of a review of most of the European diaries and travel chronicles containing reports of New World non-human primates dating from the discovery of America in 1492 until the end of the sixteenth century. We report the integral texts translated into English of these literary sources, giving a critical interpretation from a historical and scientific point of view. We note the ways these primates were perceived and described, with attention to the most important characteristics that were highlighted by the first explorers. Ethnotaxonomy and vernacular names used to designate non-human primates are also provided. This new body of knowledge, based largely on empirical reports full of details and first-hand observations, emerged as the first nucleus in the natural history of Neotropical Primates.

The surgeon/naturalists Dr John Kirk, Dr Charles Meller and Dr John Dickinson, associated with the Zambezi Expedition (1857-1864) under the leadership of Dr David Livingstone are, like him, credited with the discovery of new species' of birds. A raptor, Falco dickinsoni, is named after Dr John Dickinson. Dickinson, born in the north east of England, trained in medicine in Newcastle upon Tyne. He volunteered to join the Universities' Mission to Central Africa and arrived as part of a second group to join Bishop Frederick Mackenzie, then attempting to build a Mission in Magomero, on the Shire Mountain Plateau in modern Malawi. Livingstone and Mackenzie had sown the seeds of disaster for the first UMCA venture while Dickinson was on his way to Central Africa, and his one meeting with Livingstone was trigger to a chain of events that threatened the whole expedition. Shortly after Dickinson's arrival in Magomero, Bishop Mackenzie and a fellow traveller, Reverend Henry de Wint Burrup, died. Magomero was abandoned and the remaining missionaries retrenched in Chibisa's Village on the River Shire. There, where Dickinson did most of his bird collecting, on 17 March 1863, he died of blackwater fever. Livingstone and Kirk were present at the burial. A marble cross at Chikwawa in Malawi is marker to the event that occurred on the day of Dr John Dickinson's 32nd birthday., (© The Author(s) 2016.)

In 1761 the French scholar and Sinologue Joseph de Guignes announced that "Chinese vessels made the voyage to America many centuries before Christopher Columbus." From the Chinese books in the Bibliotheque du Roi and new missionary reports from Beijing, he concluded that the mythical land of Fusang described by a medieval Buddhist monk could be nowhere other than the west coast of North America, only recently charted by European navigators. Philippe Buache, premier géographe du roi, agreed. At the height of the French Enlightenment, the indigenous geographical tradition of China could be used to further the progress of universal science, providing evidence about issues from the mapping of the Pacific Rim to the organization of the continents. Furthermore, the story of Fusang explained the origins of American peoples, showing that the inhabitants of the New World had arrived there from the Old and contributing to a diffusionist account of the development of civilization in space and time.

Edward Leicester Atkinson qualified at St Thomas's Hospital in 1906 and joined the Navy in 1908. He was a doctor and parasitologist on Captain Scott's Terra Nova expedition to the Antarctic and had to take charge of the expedition when Scott died on his return from the South Pole. After the expedition he went to China and discovered the cause of schistosomiasis, returning at the start of the First World War in which he served with distinction, winning a DSO and Albert Medal but also being severely injured. After the war he served in various naval posts and became the youngest Surgeon Captain in the Navy before being retired on health grounds in 1928. He died at sea the following year., (© The Author(s) 2014.)

Murray Levick is best known for being one of the surgeons on Scott's Terra Nova Antarctic expedition (1910-1913) and, as a member of the Northern Party of that expedition, spending a winter living in a snow hole when the ship was unable to collect the men. However, his career encompassed much more than that. He served in the Royal Navy during both World Wars and was a pioneer in physical medicine and rehabilitation. He also founded the British Schools Exploring Society., (© The Author(s) 2014.)

The authors review the visit of Commander Charcot and the crew of his ship, the "Pourquoi Pas?", to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1908, where he stayed for eight days, while en-route as part of the second French expedition to the Antarctic. It was a glamorous stay as Commander Charcot was treated as a true star and international celebrity, befitting his position.

During the nineteenth century, scientific expeditions travelled across Brazil investigating its fauna, flora and natural geological resources. By examining letters, reports, travelogues and illustrations of that time, it is possible to picture those expeditions, the naturalists themselves and the assistants who accompanied them, as well as something of society in nineteenth century Brazil. Our research focuses on the iconography of these travelers. These images help us to understand the way these traveling naturalists viewed nature, the men living in the interior and the indigenous peoples. By comparing eight images selected to illustrate the travelers' campsites we sought to observe their similarities and differences, revealing what they tell us about these travelers, their expeditions and the context in which they worked.

In 1848 the ethnologist, surgeon and Arctic explorer Richard King (1810-1876) published a three-part series on Inuit in the Journal of the Ethnological Society of London. This series provided a detailed history of Inuit from the eleventh century to the early nineteenth century. It incorporated a mixture of King's personal observations from his experience travelling to the Arctic as a member of George Back's expedition (1833-1835), and the testimonies of other contemporary and historical actors who had written on the subject. The aim was to historicise Inuit through the use of travel reports and show persistent features among the race. King was a monogenist and his sensitive recasting of Inuit was influenced by his participation in a research community actively engaged in humanitarian and abolitionist causes. The physician and ethnologist Thomas Hodgkin (1798-1866) argued that King's research on Inuit was one of the best ethnological approaches to emulate and that it set the standard for the nascent discipline. If we are to take seriously Hodgkin's claim, we should look at how King constructed his depiction of Inuit. There is much to be gained by investigating the practices of nineteenth-century ethnologists because it strengthens our knowledge of the discipline's past and shows how modern understandings of races were formed., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Spain encouraged, during the Bourbon dynasty, the formation of scientific expeditions, among which was the Royal Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition, an example of biopolitics applied by the state in order to protect health. The expedition went all over the world, using children as a reservoir to transport the vaccine fluid. Francisco Xavier Balmis established a human chain that arm-to-arm materialized the success of the mission. The characteristics and difficulties which children had to pass through and their contribution to the spread of the smallpox vaccine are analyzed.

Home schooled without a science education, Mabel Purefoy FitzGerald (1872-1973) attended physiology lectures at Oxford in 1897, even though the school was closed to women. She found work as a researcher, published early noted papers and earned the active respect and support of senior scientists of her day. Her laboratory work with the physiologist J. S. Haldane saw her invited to the join the Pikes Peak Expedition in 1911. While the male team members measured the physiological effects of long-term residency at 14101 feet, as the sole woman FitzGerald took measurements of haemoglobin and alveolar air from herself and from mining staff and families at altitudes from 6000 to 12500 feet, travelling to remote mining communities in the Colorado Rockies. A subsequent expedition collected data at lower altitudes. Recorded in two papers, the results presented pioneering evidence of the role of oxygen in breathing.

Americans crowded newsstands in early 1910 to read Robert Peary's firsthand account of his expedition to the North Pole. As they read "The Discovery of the North Pole," serialized exclusively in Hampton's Magazine, few knew that this harrowing, hypermasculine tale was really crafted by New York poet Elsa Barker. Barker's authorship of the North Pole story put her at the center of a large community of explorers, writers, patrons, and fans who were taken with Arctic exploration as much for its national symbolism as for its thrilling tales. The fact that Barker was a woman made her ascent into elite expeditionary circles remarkable. Yet this essay argues that it was also representative: women shaped the ideas and practices of manly exploration at home as well as in the field. Peary's dependence upon women writers, patrons, and audiences came at a time when explorers were breaking away from their traditional base of support: male scientific networks that had promoted their expeditions since the 1850s. Despite the "go-it-alone" ideals of their expedition accounts, explorers adopted masculine roles shaped by the world around them: by the growing influence of women writers, readers, and lecture-goers and, simultaneously, by the declining influence of traditional scientific peers and patrons. Barker and Peary's story, then, reveals a new fault line that opened up between scientists and explorers in the late nineteenth century over the issue of manliness, a fault line still largely uncharted in historical scholarship.

Polish expedition to Spitsbergen in 1934 was already the second Polish polar expedition to the Arctic. It was scientific-mountaineering in character. 7 persons took part in it: Witold Biernawski (1898-1957)--film-maker and radiotelegraph operator, Stefan Bernadzikiewicz (1907-1939)--expedition leader, Henryk Mogilnicki (1906-1999)--photographer and radiotelegraph operator, Stefan Zbigniew Różycki (1906-1988)--geologist, Stanisław Siedlecki (1912-2002)--meteorological observer, Sylweriusz Bohdan Zagrajski (1892-1940)--triangulator, Antoni Rogal-Zawadzki (1896-1974)--topographer and photogrammetrist. The purpose of this expedition was to collect data in geology and cartography, and to a lesser degree--in glaciology, botany, zoology and meteorology. It lasted from May 20 to September 16, 1934. The time between June 20 - August 28 the group spent on Spitsbergen's Torell Land. The outcome: an area of app. 300 square kilometres of previously undiscovered land was marked by triangular system, covered by photogrammetric photos and surveyed. Geological research covered the land of app. 500 square kilometres and the group collected geological specimens of app. 800 kg in weight. On the basis of their research, two maps (at a scale of 1:50 000 and 1:200 000) were published. The participants collected also botanical and zoological material. Meteorological observations were carried out at the base over Van Keulen fjord throughout the whole expedition. Different objects on Torell Land were named by the expedition, their names referring largely to Poland (Annex I). Approximately 200 photographs and a film were shot by the expedition. Apart from scientific research, the participants published also diaries of the expedition.

From the time of the turn of the twentieth century, dilated hearts and presumed cardiac fatigue in expeditionary climbers and scientists have been the subject of much commentary in the medical and mountaineering literature. Although largely attributed by most, but not all, to left heart strain, the description of dilated hearts in these accounts is clearly that of right heart dilation as a consequence of high and sustained hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction with hypertensive remodeling. This essay will feature quotations from the writings of high altitude pioneers about dilated, strained, or enlarged hearts. It will give some brief physiology of the right side of the heart as background, but will focus on the words of mountaineers and mountaineering physicians as color commentary.

Expanding upon the model of vessels of exploration as scientific instruments first proposed by Richard Sorrenson, this essay examines the changing nature of the ship as scientific space on expedition vessels during the late nineteenth century. Particular attention is paid to the expedition of H.M.S. Challenger (1872-1876) as a turning point in the design of shipboard spaces that established a place for scientists at sea and gave scientific legitimacy to the new science of oceanography. There was a progressive development in research vessel design from "ship as instrument" to "ship as laboratory" and changing spatial practices aboard these vessels were paralleled by changes in shipboard culture. I suggest that the "ship as laboratory" has now in turn been supplanted by a new model, the "ship as invisible technician", as oceanographic research vessels deploy remote-sensing equipment and gather data that are no longer analyzed on board.

In the 1830s, the Royal Navy's ships were charged with precisely mapping out coastlines and ports, contacting local governments, and establishing trade and diplomatic relations. On returning to Britain, men like Robert FitzRoy, captain of the His Majesty's Ship (HMS) Beagle, would publish reports on their expeditions. They described and analyzed the societies they visited and compared them with Britain's actions around the globe. Brazil's tropical landscapes inspired their admiration, but its inhabitants were criticized for the inefficiency of their economic explorations and social backwardness. In this period, science accompanied the expansion of the British Empire, and accounts written by ships' captains legitimized the discourse about its practices of domination.

Jean-Baptiste Charcot, a neurologist from the famous Salpêtrière school and a renowned maritime explorer, visited Brazil twice. The first visit was in 1903, when the first French Antarctic expedition, traveling aboard the ship Français, made a very short stopover in Recife, in the state of Pernambuco. The second took place in 1908, during the famous voyage of the Pourquoi Pas? to the Antarctic, when Charcot and his crew stayed in the city of Rio de Janeiro for eight days.

After the Challenger expedition (1872-1878), other nations started to show interest in oceanographic research and organizing their own expeditions. As of 1885, Prince Albert I of Monaco conducted oceanographic campaigns with the collaboration of some of the best marine biologists and physical oceanographers of the day, inventing new techniques and instruments for the oceanographic work. Prince Albert's scientific activity certainly helped kindle the interest of his friend, Dom Carlos I, king of Portugal, in the study of the oceans and marine life. Both shared the need to use photography to document their studies. This article analyzes the role of scientific photography in oceanography, especially in the expeditions organized by the Portuguese monarch.

John Casper Branner, a US geologist, had a long history of research in Brazil. The article analyzes his exploration of the geology of the coast of Northeast Brazil during the Branner-Agassiz (1899) and Stanford (1911) expeditions. In the findings from both voyages, Branner characterized the geomorphology of sedimentary basins, sandstone reefs, and coral reefs from a Darwinian evolutionary perspective, blending natural history's model of field research with the practices of modern biology and dynamic geology. He based his interpretation of the evolution of the geological formation on physical and chemical factors. Zoological studies identified the place of evolutionary variation and adaptations of isolated marine species as an auxiliary factor in natural selection.

During the second expedition to the South Pole, Commander Jean-Baptiste Charcot and some members of the crew of "Pourquoi Pas?" developed symptoms suggestive of scurvy. The clinical picture was totally reversed after dietary changes.

This article describes an unpublished correspondence between Augustin-Ambroise Delondre (1823- 1879), son of the famous pharmacist Augustin - Pierre Delondre and Friedrich August Flückiger, Swiss pharmacist (1828-1894), professor between 1873 to 1892 of the Chair in pharmacy at the university of Strasbourg and considered as the father of pharmacognosy. This set of 9 unique hand- written letters (1868 and 1869) allows to have an clearer idea of their scientific and human relations.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a number of European expeditions traveled to the region of Lake Rudolf, now largely in northern Kenya. Although diverse in intent, many of these were undertaken in the interests of furthering colonial territorial claims. In 1900-1901, Major Herbert Henry Austin led a British expedition down to the lake from Khartoum in the north. Of the 62 African, Arab, and European members of this expedition, only 18 (29 %) arrived at its final destination at Lake Baringo in Kenya. Because of a confluence of adverse climatic, social, and political conditions, the expedition ran short of food supplies when it arrived at the northern end of the lake in April 1901. For the next 4 months, the members of the expedition struggled down the west side of the lake and beyond. The greatest mortality (91 %) occurred among the 32 African transport drivers who were the most marginally nourished at the outset of the trip. The lowest mortality among the Africans on the expedition (15 %) occurred among the members of the Tenth Sudanese Rifles Battalion, who had an excellent nutritional status at the start of the expedition. Major Austin himself suffered from severe scurvy with retinal hemorrhages which left him partially blind in his right eye. An analysis of the mortality rates among the groups that participated in this expedition was undertaken. This revealed that poor nutritional status at the start of the trip was predictive of death from starvation.