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In cases where it was obvious that a person was suffering from a simple lack of food, medieval people would have treated malnutrition by feeding them more.

There was a lot about nutrition that was not known, however, and they did not have ways of treating many kinds of malnutrition. Scurvy, for example, results from lack of fresh vegetables and fruit, and so is a type of malnutrition. It is not clear looking at a person with scurvy that he needs better food, and simply giving more of the same food will not help much. Without understanding of treatment, the best they could do was give people suffering from scurvy rest. Treatments for scurvy were ineffective during the Middle Ages, and it was not until nearly 1800 that the British navy began to implement the effective countermeasure of having sailors eat citrus fruits. Other forms of malnutrition took longer to address, and there well may be extensive misunderstanding on the subject even today.

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13y ago

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