CHAPTER 3Describing Kamchatka, Documenting Scurvy

The Second Kamchatka Expedition

Vitus Jonassen Bering led both the First and Second Kamchatka Expeditions. Born in Denmark, Bering began his naval career at fifteen and joined the Russian navy in 1704. Peter the Great selected him to lead the First Kamchatka Expedition (1725–1731) commissioned to investigate the potential connection between Kamchatka and North America. Bering and his assistants, the Danish Martin Spanberg and the Russian Aleksei Ilyich Chirikov, produced new maps of the coastlines of the North Pacific and proof of the straits that separated Asia from America. Upon his return to St. Petersburg, Bering proposed a more expansive undertaking, which became the Second Kamchatka Expedition (1733–1743).³

The first expedition had a crew of fewer than fifty men, whereas the second involved more than three hundred and included a wide array of scientific specialists drawn primarily from the ranks of the Russian Academy. Messerschmidt's fieldwork in Siberia, gathering and identifying new plants and minerals, was ongoing while the First Kamchatka was exploring the North Pacific. For the Second Kamchatka, the naval expedition and scientific mission were combined, but this was not the limit of its ambition. The first instruction to Bering was “to bring the local peoples to the Christian faith.”⁴ Although no missionary held a prominent role in the expedition, its naturalists documented aspects of religious practice across the empire, focusing on the Muslim and animistic peoples.

In May 1732, a lengthy instruction identified what types of provisions and support should be provided by which towns across Siberia, and explicitly identified peasants from the town of Ilimsk and the nearby Tungus peoples as the target audience to provide manpower.⁵ In December 1732, the Senate and Admiralty prepared a combined document that outlined the expectations for the naval mission in the North Pacific, including specific directives for the cartographer accompanying the expedition.⁶ In March 1733, the Admiralty produced its own orders that largely reiterated the earlier version, but without specifying the work the cartographer needed to complete.⁷ In April, the Senate reiterated several of the previous commands, but added a requirement to investigate the current state of the China trade, an important goal in the wake of the new Treaty of Kiakhta (1727).⁸

These documents indicate a significant investment of resources from multiple government offices. Although it was clearly agreed that Bering oversaw the entire production, the Senate and Admiralty had separate agendas for the expedition (figure 3.1). The expeditionary force would not travel in a single direction, nor would it depart at the same time, perhaps reflecting the multiple orders. A first group traveled north to document the coastline of the empire between Arkhangel’sk and the White Sea.⁹ A second group left from Okhotsk, Russia's Pacific port, under the direction of Martin Spanberg to investigate the connection to China and Japan. A third group under Bering's personal command returned to the North Pacific to further document the coasts and resources between Kamchatka and North America. A Swedish-born naval officer, Sven Waxell, would act as Bering's second in command. This choice was more important than it might have seemed at first glance, as Bering would die from scurvy during his Pacific exploration, leaving Waxell to lead the surviving crew back to Russia.¹⁰

Figure 3.1. This 1750 image of St. Petersburg is centered on two key institutions, the Admiralty and the Academy of Sciences, which were joint partners on the recently concluded Second Kamchatka Expedition. “A View of St. Petersburg on either side of the River Neva, between ye Admiralty & the Academy of Sciences,” The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library, New York Public Library Digital Collections, accessed June 9, 2024, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-1735-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.

Following Bering to Okhotsk was a group of specialists, primarily physicians working as naturalists to investigate Siberia and the North Pacific. This group included Dr. Johann Georg Gmelin, who acted as the official botanist; Gerhard Friedrich Müller, who served as the historian for the expedition; and Louis Delisle de la Croyère, a rare French scientist working at the academy as a professor of astronomy.¹¹ Russian students from the academy also accompanied the expedition, including Stepan Krasheninnikov, who would eventually be elected as a full member to the academy in 1745 in recognition of his research during the expedition.¹² Gmelin would leave the expedition before its work was completed, and he would be replaced by another German physician acting as botanist, Georg Wilhelm Steller. Steller had married Messerschmidt's widow, who provided Steller with Messerschmidt's notes and journals. Messerschmidt's work, therefore, acted as a guidebook for this later expedition and its subsequent publications. Because Waxell, Gmelin, Müller, Krasheninnikov, and Steller would all publish accounts of the work of the expedition in Russian and German as well as in English and French, the public archive of their experiences is considerable, even without including field notes still held by the academy.¹³ Their official publications were not the only discussion of the expedition in print, as its accomplishments were widely discussed across Europe in publications like the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.

The personal and professional networks that supplied the academy with its specialists played a clear role in the selection of these men. Johann Georg Gmelin received his medical doctorate (MD) from the University of Tübingen in 1727 and became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1728. Upon his return from the expedition, he communicated with Linnaeus while he prepared his Flora Sibirica, assisting with the establishment of the Linnaeus-Russia connection that would define future scientific work inside the empire.¹⁴ Gmelin worked as a physician and botanist in Russia until 1747, when he returned to Tübingen as a professor of medicine. His nephew Dr. Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin followed his uncle to the Russian Academy and would join the faculty at Tübingen where he finished editing Flora Sibirica, based on the elder Gmelin's fieldwork in Siberia during the expedition.¹⁵ Another of Johann Georg's nephews, Dr. Johann Friedrich Gmelin, became a professor at Göttingen in 1773, where he would publish the thirteenth edition of Linnaeus's work in 1788 and 1789. The Gmelin-Linneaus network thus would continue to influence scientific productions for decades after the expedition concluded.

Whereas Gmelin arrived from one of Russia's preferred schools, Georg Wilhem Steller's recruitment followed a slightly different path. Born in Germany, he received his MD from the University of Wittenberg, which was not a typical school for Russian service. He was recruited to work as an army medic, which eventually brought him to St. Petersburg. He met Messerschmidt late in 1734, married Messerschmidt's widow in 1737, and volunteered to join the Second Kamchatka Expedition already operating in the Russian Far East. He met Gmelin in Eniseisk in 1738, who recommended Steller replace him as the naturalist for the exploration of the Kamchatkan Peninsula, where he arrived in 1740. In 1741, he accompanied Bering and his crew to Alaska and back, producing copious notes of the entire process. More famously, he had multiple disagreements with the entire crew, including Bering, Waxell, and Krasheninnikov.¹⁶ Bering was the most frequent target of Steller's ire. As Steller later noted in his journal: “I returned with few results and useful discoveries, not through any fault of mine but because the Captain-Commander kept his promise to me so poorly that I was shown the mainland only from a distance and was finally put ashore for a few hours on three islands with great reluctance, as if I were a delinquent, without any help and with a lot of sarcastic comment in return for my honest zeal.”¹⁷ Although Steller's relationship with the officers was clearly uneasy, his educational background and knowledge of Messerschmidt's work provided a connection with the other naturalists’ observations, at least in terms of the humoral rhetoric that they all employed.

The outlier of this group of German specialists was the Frenchman, Louis Delisle de la Croyère. He was recommended for the expedition by his brother, Joseph Nicholas Delisle, who was personally hired for work in Russia by Peter the Great and was among the earliest members of the academy.¹⁸ Joseph had already established an international reputation for his accomplishments in astronomy in the 1720s.¹⁹ In 1731, Joseph prepared cartographic information for the expedition; his brother acted as the cartographer on the expedition. After the expedition's conclusion, the work of both brothers would be questioned by its other participants, most notably Müller, who published a refutation in the 1750s. Steller was kinder in his own notes, mentioning that the “sheer ignorance” of the naval crew had led them to improperly read Delisle's map.²⁰ The scandal has been discussed by numerous scholars as the reaction of the academy toward those seen as critical of Russia, but it was also a reflection of the ongoing rejection of French science by Russia's Academy.²¹

The physical process of embarking on the expedition proved to be as difficult as the staffing issues. Hundreds of men, their equipment, and provisions, had to be shipped across the empire. There was an established road across Siberia, but it was a mixture of overland and river passages, highly affected by seasonal weather changes.²² Conditions were sufficiently poor that groups of men died during the transit to Okhotsk before the expedition even began its ocean voyage in the North Pacific. For example, in 1735, almost three years after the initial guidelines were written, the main part of the expedition had reached the Siberian town of Iakutsk. One group led by Lt. Peter Lassenius, however, failed to complete their navigation of the Lena River to Iakutsk before the ice froze their vessels, forcing them to winter on “a little river not far from the mouth of the Lena. During the course of the winter they were severely ravaged by scurvy and their commander, afterwards reported that of his whole force, which had consisted of some sixty men, only three or four remained, the other having fallen.” A second group, under the command of Lt. Vasilii Pronchichev, were also trapped on the west side of the river, and “were there carried off by scurvy, yet not so many of them died as to prevent the ship continuing her voyage the next year under the second-in-command. So the ship made a further attempt, but that too proved fruitless.”²³ Their success rate would not improve.

Once the main part of the expedition reached Russia's Pacific port, Okhotsk, the following year, they were still in for a long wait in harsh conditions. It was necessary for the force to construct oceangoing vessels in the harbor, and then source sufficient provisions from the local environment, which proved difficult.²⁴ Sven Waxell, Bering's second in command, was hardly complimentary. He found Okhotsk to be “an unhealthy place, that offers no means of obtaining foodstuffs of any kind, except just in the spring, when large quantities of fish come into the river from the sea.” The community needed this fish to survive the year, and therefore they salted “a large part of their catch, quantities of fish they dry in the sun or in various other ways, so that this foodstuff in more or less preserved.” A primarily fish diet implied that the local community were likely phlegmatic, as the cold, moist nature of the fish would be transformed inside the body to phlegm. Although Waxell was not trained as a physician, he understood humoral theory, as the ideas transcended the scientific community to the general literate public. His conclusions on the consequences of this diet make that clear: “We observed that after our men had been eating them [fish] for several days, most of them became badly constipated and we had many cases of sickness. They can hardly be called a healthy diet. The inhabitants, however, did not become ill, presumably because they are accustomed from childhood to eat just these fish and know, so to speak, no other food.”²⁵ The local community being adapted to their conditions and diet, whereas the new arrivals suffered from their new diet that caused putrefaction, was a conclusion that any physician might have reached.

It would not be until 1739 that the new vessels launched. Part of the fleet traveled to the Kamchatkan peninsula where they spent time investigating its coasts, settlement, and people as well as its geological features, including its volcanoes, which featured prominently in some of the published accounts of the expedition. The main part of the expeditionary force would depart from Kamchatka for North America in the summer of 1741, reaching the Alaskan coast in August. The return trip to Kamchatka was dangerous, as most of the crew had fallen ill with scurvy on the voyage. By August, the crew was dependent on scavenging resources from the islands in the North Pacific for sufficient resources in hopes of survival. Within a month, many members of the crew had died, and the survivors were shipwrecked on the island now known as Bering's Island (as Bering would die on it in December) in hopes of surviving the winter from its resources. In the spring, the few survivors, including Waxell, gathered their remaining supplies, used parts from three vessels to return one to seaworthiness, and departed for Kamchatka. Chirikov, Bering's other subordinate, was no more successful with his voyage to the Kurile Islands, because its lack of resources and food also had led to scurvy outbreak. Chirikov was sufficiently ill that command of his vessel passed to his lieutenant, but the astronomer Louis Delisle de la Croyère died from the disease during that voyage.²⁶ In the end, the information and materials gathered by the survivors would be sufficient evidence of the success of the expedition, but the human costs were significant.

While the expedition was ongoing, interest was growing across Europe for news of the potential discoveries. Johann Amman regularly updated Hans Sloane in London, even when the only news was an absence of information. In March 1736, for example, Amman wrote: “It is now allmost half a year that we have nothing from the Kamtschakian expedition. In their last letters they wrote, that their design was to go from Irkutskoy to Selinginsky, & from thence to Argun & Nerschkinskoy, & back again to Irkutskoy” but nothing else, including even an accurate description of where these outposts were located.²⁷

Amman hoped to provide more specific details after updates from the expedition arrived in St. Petersburg two years later, but little had changed: “The professors, who undertook the journey to Kamtshatka are not arrived there as yet. On the contrary they returned last summer from Iakutsk along the river Lena to Irkutsk near the lake Baikal. About a year & half ago some vessels built at Ochotsk have put to Sea, in order to discover the Islands & Seas, wch lye between Kamtschatka, Yodso, Japan & Corea, but since that time I have heard nothing of their discoveries, or what is become of them.” In fact, the hardest obstacles of the cross-Siberian journey were still to be conquered. Amman wrote:

You may judge of the difficulty & tediousness of this undertaking from telling you, that from Iakutsk they are oblig’d to go up the Aldan, from this the Maja & Juma as far as the shallows will permit. In mounting those rivers they spend a whole summer; after wch they are obliged to carry all their baggage upon small Tega drawn by dogs, such as your manncke is, through a most desolate & cold country to Ochotsk, from whence they pass over to Kamtschatka. But in case the passage between the Island Novaia Semlia & the continent should be found most dangerous & difficult the way to Kamtschatka.”²⁸

Amman's final update on the expedition from 1739 hardly produced better news: “Our Kamtchkatkian Expedition gos on very slowly. The persons lead thither from the Academy have been at Irkutsk on the Lena river, but were forc’d for want of severall things to return to Irkutsk on the river Angara near the lake Baikal. Prof Muller being very much out of order, is recalled. Dr. Gmelin desires the same. There are sent allready others in their places. A Russian student is arrived in Kamtschatka.” In addition to the personnel challenges, the terrain remained foreboding. He added: “The greatest difficult of this undertaking is to go from Iakutsk to Ochotsk on the Kamtschatkian Sinus. All the Country lying between those two places is the most dreadful desert. The observations of the terrible cold, of wch I wrote to you, to have been made at Olecminskoy ostrog are not made in this place, but at Kirensky Ostrog on the Lena between Irkutsk & Iakutsk not very far from the aforesaid place.”²⁹ It is difficult to know if Amman's emphasis on the cold, barren nature of far eastern Siberia reflected the information the academy had received or was simply an excuse for a lack of information that would have sounded plausible. It was largely accurate, as the struggles with the cold environment and the difficulty of food supply were regularly mentioned in the reports that were received. Perhaps most concerning in his dispatch was the reality of experts traveling with the expedition, including Gmelin, abandoning the scientific project in favor of others, including a student (possibly Krasheninnikov) whose fieldwork would later be considered groundbreaking. This switch, however, must have raised alarms in St. Petersburg.

Interest in the expedition existed outside of the Amman-Sloane connection. Gmelin was in regular correspondence with Linnaeus, first from Siberia and then more actively once he returned to St. Petersburg, while he was completing his work on his Flora Sibirica. Gmelin regularly updated Linnaeus on the continuing work of the expedition from St. Petersburg, as he was in contact with Steller.³⁰ In the extended conversation between Gmelin and Linnaeus, Gmelin clearly accepted Linnaeus's taxonomy for plants but offered frequent corrections for classification of specific species. Linnaeus regularly advised Gmelin on his application of the system, though Gmelin moved forward with his choices, even apologizing to Linnaeus for the plants in Flora Sibirica that did not conform to Linnaeus's system. Gmelin accepted, however, Linnaeus's decision to sex plants, a choice Amman had rejected.³¹ Although the majority of their communication involved classifying Siberian plants in Linnaeus's system, they also discussed categorizing animals, including sheep, hares, fish, and squirrels. Based on his Siberian travels, Gmelin weighed in with questions and suggestions about refining the taxonomy.³²

For a long time, the legacy of the Second Kamchatka Expedition focused on its successes in mapping the north Pacific and the travel along the Aleutian archipelago. It was undeniably of interest across Europe, as demonstrated by a member of the Academy of Sciences publishing an explanation of Bering's success in the North Pacific to Philosophical Transactions.³³ After Bering's death, both the Straits and an island in that body of water were named after him in recognition of the expeditions’ work. As historians and anthropologists have become more critical about Russia's colonial legacy in the north Pacific and Alaska, both in terms of the environmental damage and physical abuses of the population, the expedition became a marker of future destruction.³⁴ In the contemporary era, some Russian scholars have attempted to rehabilitate Russia's history in the region.³⁵ Ongoing work publishing and translating the records of the expedition, as well as the fieldwork conducted by men like Steller has shed new light on the remarkable contributions to botany, geology, and geography. The ethnographic legacy of the descriptions of the population produced by Gmelin and Steller, as well as the long-term effect this material had on the Russian government's view of its empire, however, need to be critically assessed.

Applying Categories

All the material produced by the expedition over the course of its operation reflects its complicated origins. It was not a single investigation but included multiple routes with multiple actors working under multiple guidelines. Personality conflicts fueled disagreements. Much of this documentation, however, described the people, geography, and climate in a similar manner, revealing how familiar humoral concepts were for these eighteenth-century figures. In terms of the scientific work of the expedition, it is arguable that Johann Georg Gmelin had the greatest impact considering the importance of his botanical work, Flora Sibirica, and its contribution toward Linnaeus's developing taxonomy.³⁶ In terms of the views of the people of the empire, Gmelin's travel narrative would be more influential. It was first published in Latin, with a German title, in four parts in 1751 and 1752, and would be translated into French within a decade.³⁷

The second botanist on the expedition, Steller, would be heavily influenced by Messerschmidt's work, but Gmelin's primary reference to earlier travels in Siberia was Eberhard Isbrand Ides's embassy to China in the 1690s.³⁸ Unlike Steller, however, Gmelin never reviewed any of Messerschmidt's Siberian field notes, so the absence of a reference to it is quite logical.³⁹ Overall, Gmelin attempted to answer all the requests issued in St. Petersburg. Reflecting the instructions to the expedition from the Senate, recurring references are made to the ongoing trade with China, both to goods moving across Siberia and to local trade in different communities. Gmelin observed that textiles were the largest commodity in the trade, but other products included porcelain, tobacco, tea, sugar, sugar candy, candied ginger, and orange peel.⁴⁰ Following the first instruction from the throne, innumerable references appear to current religious practices across Siberia, with a focus on the influence that Islam held among the Tatars and those people in contact with the Central Asian khanates—including, for example, the prevalence of Persian texts among the “Muslim Tatars” of Siberia, “who are not more enlightened because of their embrace of all of these superstitions.”⁴¹ In this specific instance, Gmelin was complaining about the Tatars's confidence in Persian-language medical texts, perhaps unaware that famous works by Avicenna and Rhazes that were part of his own medical training had been written by Central Asian Muslims.

Gmelin answered the government's instructions with humoral descriptions of the people, geography, and climate and with comments on their consumption habits and religious traditions. In a sense, this was an evolution of the seventeenth-century depictions, but it also paralleled the ongoing debates about the proper classification schema for people. In Linnaeus's first edition of Systema Naturae (1735), he placed humankind into the new genus Homo, which he divided into four categories, characterized by skin color and geography: “Europaeus albesc. (whitish European), Americanus rubesc. (reddish American), Asiaticus fuscus (dark coloured Asian), and Africanus nigr. (black African).”⁴² Linnaeus's categorization reflected an ongoing discussion in northern Europe that sociologist Greggor Mattson calls “ethnoracial classification,” or “the measurement of population categories to inscribe the boundaries among castes, races, ethnicities, or nationalities.”⁴³ Contemporary scholars have analyzed these human taxonomies (whether Linnaeus's or Buffon's) as the emergence of scientific racism, broadcast by Europeans globally, but whether Russia and its empire fit within this scheme was very much a question of the expedition.⁴⁴ Were Indigenous Siberians classified as European or Asian?

Linnaeus would continue to refine his system, in part by incorporating the ideas and observations of his widespread correspondents. It would not be until the tenth edition in 1759–1760, that humans became Homo sapiens, which remain divided into four categories primarily based on skin color, but added the importance of “physical characteristics, stature, clothing, [and] temperament, governance, and ways of living.”⁴⁵ The historian Christina Skott has argued that Linnaeus's familiarity with Swedish travel narratives to Asia was a key element in his broader reassessment; however, as the historian Lisbet Koerner illustrated, Linnaeus also discussed his new idea of Homo sapiens with Gmelin.⁴⁶ It seems logical to assume that Gmelin's fieldwork in Siberia had some role in the changing taxonomic system.

Reading Gmelin's observations from the 1730s reveals its utility for thinking about how to categorize humankind, as he relied on what contemporary anthropologists would call “thick description” or ethnography.⁴⁷ One of the longest entries involved several groups of Tungus that he encountered, beginning outside of the Siberian town of Kuznetsk. Gmelin first spotted “several Tunguses, some in their canoes” along the bank of the Lena River; Gmelin and his compatriots “begged them to come to us, but they snuck into the forest.” He encountered a second group long enough to engage them in conversation, but as he approached the group, they “retreated higher into the mountains, saying that they had nothing to give us, and that they would be ashamed to approach [the expedition] without offering presents.” Despite assuring this group that the expedition intended to offer them goods, the offer “did not tempt them; as they probably took us for Slavs, who plundered these unfortunate people as soon as the opportunity arose.” Although his encounter with the Tungus had not started auspiciously, Gmelin was optimistic, noting: “the women are dark and inaccessible, but they are honest; they would have wanted to talk to us, but they did not know how to speak Russian, and our Slavs who speak Tungus, only pursued conversation with the men.”⁴⁸ It might be tempting to consider Gmelin's “dark” women as fitting into Linnaeus's “Asiatic” category; however, Gmelin's notes were produced at the same time Linnaeus first published. It is more likely that Gmelin relied on the humoral assessment of melancholic people having dark complexions.

Much of Gmelin's text debates his success, or lack thereof, in approaching Indigenous women across Siberia. It was a valid scientific pursuit, as the cold climate should have produced phlegmatic and melancholic men and women who struggled to procreate. The frequency of sexual encounters was, after all, a humoral nonnatural. Therefore, his ongoing investigations of the sex lives of Siberian peoples was justifiable. Among the Tungus, he noted that “the young women wear pants a little longer [than the men] but above the knee; an old habit that destroys modesty because they are very short. The women also smoke like men, and make use of Chinese tobacco; each of them had a little leather bag attached to their pants in which were tobacco, lighter, and a pipe.” For Gmelin, both habits were surprising for a theoretically cold people. It was perhaps not a surprise that he invited a group of Tungus women to his boat, but only succeeded in enticing them after promising that he would provide “tobacco, flour, and bread. The contentment they felt at receiving these little presents caused us the greatest pleasure. The women wrapped the tobacco in paper, as they did with the bread and flour, and then took off their stocking and put the gifts into the other.” Gmelin “recommend the women tell their husbands that they had been provided these presents,” but, after waiting some time, no men came to their informal party.⁴⁹

Even in this short summary, the humoral details are still striking. The general coloring of the Tungus and the local environment both feature in the first details. The sexual behaviors of the women are highlighted, even if it remains unclear whether Gmelin's interest was scientific or merely prurient. In this manner, he was hardly different than any eighteenth-century traveler, as the sexual habits of non-Europeans became an expected, and enticing, part of any narrative.⁵⁰ The implication may be that Gmelin and his compatriots paid these Tungus women for sexual favors, but it is far from explicitly stated. At the same time, Gmelin was adding to the expected categories of description by highlighting the features of Tungus clothing, with women in short pants here and men in finely detailed leather clothing elsewhere. Gmelin's interest in clothing may have been connected to his ongoing sexual investigation, but it also predicted Linnaeus's inclusion of clothing as a signifier in his revised taxonomy.

The details included in this description of the Tungus reflects the topics included in all the peoples described by Gmelin. The Chuvashes in European Russia, for example, “have almost all red hair. The men dress in the Russian way, but they wear short hair. Women have three dresses, but they do not think them all suitable for certain ages. The old ones wear the Russian habit. The young people have the bodice of the dress made in the Russian way, but their sleeves are made in the Polish, that is, they have an opening to pass the hands towards the middle. The lower part if hanging and is worn in a scarf.”⁵¹ Gmelin invested time and effort in noting dress styles and the cultural implications of these choices. The Chuvashes's long connection to Russia (nearly two centuries by the time of the expedition) physically appeared in the adoption of Russian dress. The distinctive aspect of the Chuvashes, their red hair, was the telltale sign of a sanguine constitution, setting them apart from the more typically melancholic and phlegmatic peoples of the empire. Sanguine people, of course, were known for their fiery temperament and sexual appetites. Chuvash women, however, seemed resistant to Gmelin's persistent attempts to see them undressed. A humoralist would consider this modesty as acting against the women's temperament, which could explain Gmelin's surprise.

A large part of Gmelin's text details differences among the many groups of Tatars he encountered, from the Volga River until far eastern Siberia. He viewed each group distinctly, as the environment was consistently shifting across the continent. Those that resided in towns were generally regarded as superior to those still living in smaller villages. The Tatars in Krasnoiarsk, for example, had “a figure that cannot displease Europeans: they have neither sunken eyes nor noses, nor a flat and wide face; they look very similar to the men of Europe. Their size is ideal; it is rare to find some that are lame or very large: they are thin, lively, laborious, affable, genuine, and sincere.” The description implies that Tatars would look unfamiliar to Europeans, with sunken eyes and flat faces, and their personality should be lazy and indolent, in other words, the attitudes expected of more traditionally phlegmatic or melancholic people. Krasnoiarsk's Tatars, so active and industrious, clearly had admirable qualities: “All theft and violence are unheard of crimes among them. Libertinism and drunkenness are not common, however they are not exempt from these vices…. When they come into Russian towns or villages, they frequent the taverns or houses of their friend who have beer and spirits. However, it can be said in general that they are not intemperate.”⁵²

Gmelin often observed that the proximity to Russian communities was the common feature of the “lively, laborious” Tatars he encountered. Adopting Russian habits might improve the Tatars as well, though not to as great an extent. Among a group of Siberian Tatars in the village of Kaltirak, “fifty leagues” from the Chumysh River, a tributary of the Ob, Gmelin noted their distinct culture emerging from their environment, living “around pines, birches, and poplars” on the bank. Several of these Tatars had been baptized by the Archbishop of Tobol’sk, but Gmelin was unpersuaded that they viewed themselves as true Christians, finding no evidence of ongoing worship. However, “we came upon a Tatar woman; this woman was very beautiful, she had black hair, smooth skin, a soft, pleasant manner, and an advantageous waist.” As if the details he highlighted were not sufficiently suggestive, he “asked her if she was happy with her husband, and if she did not want to have a more pleasant one. She told us that she would gladly accept this change, but that God would not want her to leave her husband.” For comparison, a nearby community of Tatars to the Kaltirak village, which did not convert to Orthodoxy, had more problematic features. “These Tartars have several wives. They do not eat pork, but they drink alcohol. Their women are not beautiful, and almost all smoke tobacco.”⁵³ Unlike his predecessors, perhaps, Gmelin had more faith in the potential for Russians to improve the qualities of their subjects. Knowing this was an official report from a state investigation, however, it may have been an acknowledgment of the expedition generating the material necessary to prove that Russian colonialism was improving Siberia, rather than failing it.

In many ways, Gmelin wrote a travel narrative that resembled the ongoing work of the broader republic of letters across Europe. Gmelin extensively detailed the history of a hermaphrodites in Siberia, once he learned that there were two in Isetskoe, a village near Tiumen’, “and two more in a neighboring village: we wanted to see them. They were still childlike, and we barely distinguished what sex they belonged to; it was generally agreed they were a unique species of men. The priest of the place counted them in the ranks of men, and gave them masculine names.” Gmelin gathered the four hermaphrodites and sent them for further inspection the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. He did not explain if he allowed them to be accompanied on the journey, or if they, their families, or their communities consented to their removal. He did report that the academy's anatomist, who was Boerhaave's son, “proved in an undeniable way that it was indeed men,” which Gmelin found surprising, as “they seemed to me to be women.”⁵⁴ Dedicating a chapter to the discovery of four hermaphrodites may seem surprising considering the overall scale and variety of peoples in Siberia, but hermaphroditism was an exciting subject in the eighteenth century, especially in denoting “primitive” peoples.⁵⁵ It was simply evidence of how well the material noted by Gmelin reflected eighteenth-century interests.

Gmelin's attitudes toward Siberia's people and the characteristics with which he described them was shared by the other specialists, perhaps most by Steller, his fellow physician turned botanist. Steller shared Gmelin's reliance on humoral observations and a concern about the sexual habits and diseases of imperial subjects. For example, Steller extensively recorded the complexions of the Itelmens living on the Kamchatka peninsula. He identified them as a “mixed people…. Since these people could have originated from no other place than Mongolia, it follows indisputably that they emigrated to this land of Kamchatka long before the break of monarchy of the great Genghis Khan and even before the Mongols and Tungus came into being.” Long exposure to the colder, and moister, environment of Kamchatka changed the Itelmens from their Mongolian origins. For Steller, the impact of the environment on physical stature was expected. As he mentioned: “Northern people are always shorter than those living in southern parts, as can be seen without extensive documentation by comparing all over the earth. Mountain people who live in valleys are always shorter than those living in broad, open regions were. People who get more physical exercise tend to be taller and stronger.”⁵⁶ The Itelmens reflected this mixture of complexions, originating from a distant land, but adapted to their local environment.

Steller did not describe them as phlegmatic or melancholic, but, like Gmelin, his physical description was based in the standard images of phlegmatic or melancholic bodies. The Itelmens had a “short stature; brownish skin color; black hair; modest beards; flat faces; flattened noses; deep-set, small eyes; sparse, small eyelashes; hanging bellies; hair-free genitals; slow walk and angled steps; thin, small hands and feet; small male and large, broad female genitals; and also their timidity, fearfulness, boastfulness, timid submissiveness and stubbornness if one treats them politely.” Steller's list featured the physical characteristics of a cold body: short, with small and hair-free genitals. Steller summarized his assessment with a blanket statement that the Itelmen lifestyle simply reflected their climate and diet, as expected: “Their other customs are not to be considered as much since they derive from the climate and the way in which they subsist.”⁵⁷

Much of the Itelmens’ way of life confirmed Steller's diagnosis of a melancholic or phlegmatic complexion. “Generally, an Itelmen does not stir from his peace and quiet to go hunting or leave his dwelling for any reason before he is forced to do so by extreme necessity.” A lack of physical activity was the primary attribute of all cold people. The Itelmens compounded this physical challenge by living on a diet of fish, which was long established to have an excess of phlegm (cold, moist complexion). Steller was compelled to mention, “no matter how much bogus proof the learned physicians maintain that fish are unhealthful, the experience of a whole nation contradicts them,” because the Itelmen were prospering.⁵⁸

Steller knew there was an essential contradiction of the Itelmens's nature. Unlike all other cold people, “these people were intent on increasing their population.” In fact, unlike the majority of people living in the Russian Empire, the Itelmens “tend toward contentment and naturally, like beasts, toward lust…. They seek contentment in sexual pleasures. They desire to eat, drink and sleep well, and change place and company often in order not to become ill-humored. They seek frequent sexual intercourse with different partners and fantasize voluptuously, maintaining and inciting these fantasies by dancing, singing, and by telling entertaining stories.”⁵⁹ For Steller, the Itelmens's mixed character produced an unexpected outcome—a cold people who were interested in sex.

Steller presents the sex lives and marriage habits of the Itelmens in great detail, describing different- and same-sex sexual encounters for both sexes as an ordinary part of life. “Nonetheless, the men are not jealous, living on the sly with many other women and young girls, which they like a lot, but the men have to guard their secret carefully because their women are very jealous, although the latter demand freedom in everything, covet the love of other men, and are insatiable and above all so conceited that she who can list the most lovers is considered the happiest woman, and they try to outdo each other in bragging.” He added in a note that “women also commit adultery with women, by way of the clitoris … These people also have male lovers whom the men, in addition to their wives, make use of through the posterior without any jealousy. In the past, the women also committed sodomy with dogs a lot.”⁶⁰

Although the mixed physical qualities offered a potential idea why the Itelmens were sexualized, Steller offered another reason: “What makes these people so lecherous and prone to venery is probably the consumption of so many fish eggs and bulbs, as well as moldy fish—their winter food turning completely moldy, sharp and acrid—for semen is frequently generated and the blood vessels are stimulated by the stinking fish fat.” As proof of this theory, Steller “experimented” on an Itelmen woman “who ate at my table for a half a year and was totally kept from the usual food became much more moderate and modest.”⁶¹

Although Steller began his description of the Itelmens noting their large population, he believed that “the Itelmen in marriage are more intent on sexual pleasure than procreation and increasing their families, which can be concluded from the fact that they prevent pregnancy by various medicines and that they seek to abort by means of herbs as well as violent external means. They also used to expose the newborn children in the manner of the old Germans or even to strangle them with their own hands, which still happens today now and then.” In addition, later in his notes Steller mentioned a “decoction of wild celery,” which men used to treat scurvy and women to prevent pregnancy, but he offered no comments on its effectiveness. He mentioned, however, that the local cure for venereal disease was a “decoction of the beautiful yellow-flowered leatherleaf,” but it was not a success.⁶²

Steller's account might reflect his own sexual interests more than the reality of life among the Itelmens in the early eighteenth century. Steller's physical description of a typical Itelmen with small, hair-free genitals suggests some familiarity with their bodies, and his comment that they sought intercourse through dancing and singing suggests that he, not necessarily the objects of his observation, found this material enticing. He also mentions that anyone who lives on Kamchatka must “acquire a woman or live in secret understanding with another's wife” from “necessity,” because “no one washes or sews for him, takes care of him or does him any favors unless he pays with sexual intercourse.”⁶³ Regardless of the morality of the situation, Steller's objectification of the Itelemens is striking. The people of Kamchatka were objects for experimentation for him.

Steller's discussion of sexual activity reflected a growing anxiety around the empire's sexual habits and its potential effects on population growth.⁶⁴ For Russia, the Second Kamchatka Expedition only fueled this anxiety with the realization that Russia was filled with a variety of physical body types: could there be one solution for the procreation challenge? In this way, Steller's contribution, while exploitative, contributed toward the pursuit of a solution to the empire's greatest challenge. There may be no evidence indicating moldy fish was prescribed as a new type of aphrodisiac following the expedition, but Steller's work presented the idea that local cures for Russian problems could be discovered. At the same time, Steller's observations on the widespread venereal epidemic on the Kamchatkan peninsula only highlighted a growing health crisis for which no one in the empire yet had a successful solution. More sex could be better, but not if it produced more disease. Russia's management of its empire was a mixed success at best.

Steller's unpublished notes highlighted the ways in which the members of the expedition documented Russia's ongoing challenges in managing its empire. Endemic diseases, including venereal conditions, threatened Russia's ability to populate its territory. Published records from the expedition, like Gmelin's, could have been read in similar ways, but, at the time, his unique ethnographic descriptions of the peoples of Siberia fueled the ongoing taxonomic project of eighteenth-century Europe. Although the Linnaean system was not the only option in the 1730s and 1740s, Linnaeus's connection with the Russian scientific establishment predated the work the expedition and would continue for decades to come. The type of information Gmelin noted as having significance for understanding body types—including clothing and ­lifestyle—would be included in Linnaeus's later edition of his Systema Naturae. Clearly, the ongoing work in Russia reflected a broader European process of categorizing humankind. The unanswered question of the Second Kamchatka Expedition would occupy Russia's naturalists for decades to come: were Indigenous Siberians European or Asian? Most were phlegmatic or melancholic, but their mixed European-Asian features had yet to be placed in the new taxonomic system.

Managing Scurvy

Although the attention of Europe's naturalists may have been focused on the information unearthed by the Second Kamchatka Expedition, the discoveries from Siberia and the North Pacific did little, if anything, to alter the concerns about the danger of Russia's climate. As Gmelin corresponded with Linnaeus to debate classification, British diplomats loudly protested the dangerous climate in European Russia, long considered more temperate than Siberia's extremes. Claudius Rondeau, the British consul during the 1730s, regularly described the ongoing stress of life in Russia—its extremely cold winters and its hot and dry summers sparking fires that left “every body here in the greatest terrour and consternation.”⁶⁵

If the climate was not sufficiently challenging, the return of the plague in 1738 was perhaps too much for Rondeau. The plague spread along Russia's border with Poland-Lithuania, thought to be the outcome of Poland's current war with the Ottoman Empire. The Russian government had imposed quarantines along the border as soon as the news arrived, but “the plague had broke their measures” by September 1738.⁶⁶ Rondeau mentioned that it was well known that the plague was endemic to Ukraine, and therefore it was impossible to campaign in the region without risking exposure.⁶⁷ By December, the government enacted a series of quarantine lines between the front and the Russian heartland. The new measures seemed effective, as “no body was permitted to come from the Army to Mosco, without doing Quarantine at twenty verst from that Citty, or bringing a Passport from the Felt Marshall Munick or some other General Officer. I have even been assur’d, that the Plague was actually got into some few houses in the Ukraine, but by burning them, it's at present intirely ceased.”⁶⁸ Although quarantines and fires were used as the state's best defenses. Rondeau understood the operation of the plague in accordance with conventional wisdom of that era. To him, the public health measures could control the plague, but the climate ultimately won. “It's report’d here as certain, that there is nothing to be fear’d from the Plague, tho’ it was some time ago on the Borders of the Ukraine & even in a little Village near Carkoff. This Ministry assures it is intirely stop’d, & if any infections should yet remain in those Distant parts, the excessive Cold Weather, we have had for some Weeks, will infallibly drive it away & purify the Air.”⁶⁹ For Rondeau, the cold's ability to mitigate the spread of the plague was a benefit to Russia. The climate offered protection from the ongoing danger of southern entanglements in the Ottoman Empire.⁷⁰ Rondeau was not a physician, but the ability of cold weather to defeat the plague was established medical knowledge, a part of Sydenham's nosology, among other proponents.⁷¹

Even if the plague was defeated by Russia's climate, the British complexion was not suited toward the cold. Rondeau had complained for a decade about his poor health from St. Petersburg's climate. In September 1739, when Rondeau wrote to the foreign secretary in London with apologies for having “been so very ill, My Lord, for ten days past occasioned by a great cold, which we often get in this hard climate.”⁷² Unlike his previous illnesses, this one would prove fatal a week later.⁷³ Rondeau's illness was quite painful, according to an account provided by his nephew. It began with “a Diarrhea that lasted thirteen Days, and then suddenly turned to a nervous feavour and defluxion upon his Breast with a continual delirium until his Death.”⁷⁴ From the symptoms, it is not clear what this illness may have been, but it is clear it was not a simple cold. In Rondeau's correspondence, the cold climate may have saved the Russian Empire from a plague outbreak in 1738, but it was also the climate that ultimately destroyed his health and took his life.

Rondeau marked the beginning of a long line of British diplomats who connected Russia's climate to their poor health in St. Petersburg. John Carmichael, the Earl of Hyndford, was another. In January 1749, he protested to the foreign secretary that he was “in pain for the rest of my Equipage & my provisions” because “after nine days of the Strongest Frost that ever was known in Russia, there has been such a Thaw during fourteen days consecutively, that all the roads & most of the rivers are quite broke up, a thing never yet known in this Country,” making it impossible for his baggage to be delivered to St. Petersburg upon his arrival.⁷⁵ Less than a month later, Carmichael submitted a request to the foreign secretary to receive permission to leave Russia for spas in Germany. He hoped to be relieved of his office early enough to reach his destination before the season was over to avoid “the great Detriment to my health.”⁷⁶ The long delay in perceiving permission caused a minor crisis for Carmichael, who not only missed the spa season but also was prevented by his illness from attendance at court. When questioned by the Russian minister, Aleksei Petrovich Bestuzhev-Riumin, why he desired such a rapid departure from the court, Hyndford could not help but reveal that it was “on account of his Health.” As proof, Carmichael “shew’d Him my Hands, that are full of Scurvy Spots. Therefore, it was necessary to access “the Air, and of making Use of Mineral Waters” in Germany, as the only solution to mitigate the damage of living “in this cold Climate.”⁷⁷

Carmichael was the first British diplomat to suggest that scurvy was a natural outcome of the cold climate, but this association—between scurvy and Russia's climate—had been well established in medical circles. The Second Kamchatka Expedition had been plagued by the disease, and it was known to have caused both Bering and Deslisle's deaths, among others. It would have very much been on the mind of the court in the 1740s. As a result of this interest, the naturalists of the academy investigated all potential cures across the empire as scurvy was a persistent endemic challenge.⁷⁸ A cure for scurvy, or at least a successful treatment regimen, would bring fame and recognition to the academy for its work and would facilitate Russian colonization and settlement not only in Siberia but also North America.

It was not until the 1920s that vitamin C was discovered. Although modern physicians know scurvy is a vitamin C deficiency, historical “scurvy” was an amalgamation of symptoms before the twentieth century, the cause of which was widely debated.⁷⁹ Weakness and fatigue were regularly noted but could have applied to a myriad of diseases. The pathognomonic symptom for scurvy was bleeding gums, but now we know that is also a sign of an advanced case. Scurvy commonly afflicted sailors, but their diet was so poor, primarily consisting of water, dried beef, and desiccated bread (so-called biscuit), any number of nutritional diseases could have affected them. Before vitamins, therefore, scurvy was a broad category to describe any illness at sea.

Further complicating a diagnosis for scurvy, much less a treatment, was that physicians were quite certain that scurvy existed in two separate forms: land scurvy and sea scurvy. The symptoms were similar, but the causes were distinct. In the seventeenth century, sea scurvy was caused by long exposure to moist, cold air. Some argued that long-term separation from the land was unnatural, and only a reconnection to soil could solve this type of “earthsickness,” as historian Joyce Chaplin termed it.⁸⁰ This inspired the habit among crews of eating as many green plants as possible upon returning to shore; it was a means of reconnecting to the land. Cynical modern scholars might suggest that greens were a significant improvement of the diet of sailors. They might not have contained vitamin C (some do of course), but vegetable matter in general could address other nutritional imbalances in the body. Whereas sea scurvy was caused by excess cold, making its occurrence over water common, land scurvy was attributed to hot causes, including acidic foods. The reason was its association with the initial symptoms of pimples and ulcers, signs of excess heat in the body. Patients suffering from land scurvy could be bled to reduce the heat, or given cooling foods, particularly white foods that were known to produce phlegm in the body.⁸¹

Both Steller and Waxell produced detailed accounts of managing scurvy among the crew during the Pacific voyage. Steller regularly encouraged the crew to consume as many greens as possible, whereas Waxell endorsed traditional naval solutions, including fresh air and hard work.⁸² Waxell's narrative is by far the most thorough on the scurvy outbreak, perhaps as a result of his official responsibilities in evaluating the expedition. Both Waxell and Steller shared the opinion that the scurvy facing the crew was a result of putrefaction of the humors in the body. As the cold closed the pores, humors accumulated leading to rot, which was clearly diagnosable by the bad breadth of the sailors. According to Waxell, the problems began for the crew in Okhotsk before their departure, as the only food available was salted fish, resulting in constipation among the crew, an obvious step toward putrefaction. As much as salt was considered to be a cause of scurvy, constipation was known to be one of its first symptoms. Following a spring departure in 1741, Waxell recorded that scurvy had spread among the entire crew by August, which he believed was induced by the lack of fresh provisions and clean water. A storm drove their ship ashore in October, with the crew landing on an island they would name for Bering following his death in December.The climate of the island exacerbated their condition, according to Waxell, from its “continuing dampness,” and the lack of food and gin only worsened their condition. Gin, in particular, had kept the men “in a fairly good fettle.” Throughout October and November, “there were few who were still on their feet …, and so reluctant to do any work…. Their only wish, indeed, was that a speedy death might free them from their miserable plight.”⁸³ Gin may not have been a traditional remedy, but as Waxell was convinced that melancholy was one of the most dangerous symptoms, and it, apparently, was best treated with alcohol.⁸⁴

Beyond his unconventional ideas of treatment, Waxell held many traditional views of the dangers of scurvy. When the boat shipwrecked, most of the crew moved to the shore, but Waxell avoided this for as long as possible. He observed that “Many died on deck as soon as they were brought out into the air,” a longstanding belief that a change in air quality could produce rapid death. To avoid this fate, he attempted to stay in his quarters on board, keeping himself warm with a small fire. However, “the bad air and filth found its way even there from the holds where so many had been lying ill for two or even three months, attending to the needs of nature where they lay. I suffered so severely from this evil, unhealthy stench that I became unable to use either my feet, hands, or my teeth, and so was as good as ready to be claimed by death.” As a result, the able-bodied among the crew decided to move Waxell off the ship, though he was careful to take the precaution of wrapping his whole face in a “thick warm cap and placed another on his head” so fearful was he of the possibility of dying from exposure to clean air.⁸⁵

Although dozens of sailors would die on Bering's Island, including Bering, Waxell and a skeleton crew would slowly regain their health over the winter and launch a rebuilt ship in the spring to return to Kamchatka. Waxell paid extensive attention to the varieties of meat the crew consumed over the winter, as fresh food was necessary for recovery. He ranked young sea-lions “as the best eating of all,” sea-bear flesh as “revolting, because it has a very strong and unpleasant smell, more or less like that of an old goat,” and a dead whale as “rank” but nonetheless as “a good fortune.” Despite his interest in describing the new meats available from the local waters, Waxell concluded that “the green shoots,” collected by their botanist, Steller, made the greatest difference. They used “some for drinking, some for eating, and by taking them we found our health noticeably improved.” He concluded, “from my own experience I can assert that none of us became well or recovered his strength completely before we began eating something green, whether plant or root.”⁸⁶

Waxell's observations on the disease differ slightly from the records of both Steller and Gmelin. Gmelin addressed the disease as he did all illnesses in expedition, first describing the symptoms and then the treatment. He wrote: “The symptoms of scurvy were pains residing in places where we had injuries or abscesses, fatigue accompanied by extraordinary slumber, swelling of the feet on which appeared here and there blue spots, a violent sneezing which caused an incredible pain in the kidneys, sore teeth, foul breath, swelling throughout the body accompanied by an unquenchable thirst, a dry cough, and a kind of constipation, the effects of which lasted two or three weeks, and the most powerful purgatives were without effect.” The cure he outlined was one that would have been familiar to many—avoiding excessive cold, taking in as much fresh air as possible to “drive out the harmful vapors,” and hard work. In fact, more than four hours of sleep a day was to be avoided.⁸⁷

Gmelin, however, departed the expedition before the North Pacific journey, ceding his role as botanist to Steller. Therefore Steller had an opportunity to add to Gmelin's Siberian observations with his fieldwork in Kamchatka and North America. The Itelmen, for example, “easily cure scurvy with frozen fish in the winter and with fresh fish, garlic, and other herbs in the summer.”⁸⁸ After their voyage, his official narrative recorded a commitment to eating fresh herbs and berries and drinking spring water as the most effective treatment. According to Steller, the crew's rejection of his advice ultimately led to the deadly outbreak. At several stops, he urged the crew to load as much clean water (avoiding the salt or lime deposits along the shore) and fresh plants as possible, but to no avail. Leaving Shumagin Island, for example, he asked the men “to gather up as many antiscorbutic plants as we would need, [but] the gentlemen scorned even this proposal, so valuable to themselves and for which they should have thanked me.”⁸⁹ Therefore, when they fell ill, Steller concluded that it was their fault, his criticism reflecting his personality conflicts with the crew.

Steller's prophylactic treatment for himself proved successful, as he was one of the few able-bodied men when the crew landed on Bering's Island. There he would spend time hunting for herbs and greens rather than hunting sea-cows and sea-otters, which Waxell would later record in great detail. There was no doubt to Steller that his gathering was the key to the crew's cure. In the spring, “we also got many edible and tasty plants and roots; eating these provided variety as well as medicine for our emaciated bodies.” The plants included sweet grass, bitter cress, brookline, figwort, and lingonberries.⁹⁰

Steller, Gmelin, and Waxell might have disagreed on treatment, but the one issue that no one in the crew challenged was the cause of the disease. Waxell summarized their conclusions in a chapter on scurvy at the end of his narrative: “Its cause is presumably to be found in the continual diet of salt and dry foods and in the often stinking and putrid water on which they must subsist. [The crew] work hard and so become exhausted, while the continual damp raw weather may also play its part.” As the crew became tired, their depression would transition to the disease's second stage, in which visible symptoms, including bleeding gums and swollen limbs, and constipation occurred.⁹¹

Scurvy not only was a problem for Russia's exploration of its empire nor its future settlement but also was an increasing concern of all oceangoing European empires in the eighteenth century. Contemporary physicians across Europe were studying outbreaks and developing new therapies in hopes of alleviating the condition. The best known of these men was the British physician, James Lind, who published the first edition of his groundbreaking study, A Treatise of Scurvy, in 1753. The challenge was obvious, physicians had “ascribed to this modern calamity” a “very extraordinary number of scorbutic symptoms.” Despite more than a century of investigation, Europe was still plagued by “the inefficacy of one uniform method of cure.” The “simple antiscorbutics” being proscribed “failed to remove the many various and complicated disorders that were classed under the name scurvy.”⁹² Considering the clear association of the Russian Empire and scurvy following the Second Kamchatka Expedition, it should not be surprising that Lind turned to his professional contacts working in the Russian Empire for the latest information about scurvy before publishing his study.

Lind's Russian informant was John Cook, a Scottish doctor in Russian service, who arrived in Russia from Scotland in 1735 and worked for the navy in Kronstadt, Azov, Astrakhan, and Riga. Cook's information had arrived late in the production process for Lind's treatise but were included as Lind felt the information was too significant to leave out. Cook sent Lind his notes on several Russian scurvy outbreaks, beginning with Azov. To set the scene, Cook described the environment of Azov in some detail, including that it was “situated, as most towns on the banks of that river [the Don], on a low sandy soil, and surrounded with lakes, marshes, and woods. The winter commonly begins in the month of October. In November, all the rivers, lakes, and marshes are quite frozen over, and the whole country is covered with snow; which continues until about the beginning of April.” In other words, Azov certainly had a cold and moist climate. While serving there in the winter of 1739, “scurvy made its appearance” in February, but the peasants “were not so much afflicted with it as the sailors, nor the sailors so much as the soldiers. Many, both sailors and soldiers, were sent to our hospital”; most of the patients were discharged by April. Cook's argument was that the labor each group exerted played a role in the severity of their illness, as the peasants provided heavy labor all winter, and the sailors remained involved in shipbuilding, leading to fewer cases. Soldiers, wintering in the barracks, suffered the highest incident rate. Astrakhan provided a similar case study, with a moist location “on small island washed by the Volga.” Cook added: “The garrison soldiers are much more subject to the scurvy than the boors [serfs], and these last than the sailors. The soldiers live a very indolent life, having but little duty to perform. They eat hardly any thing else, even in their hospitals, besides rye break and meal, with fish; and have nothing but water for drink…. The hospitals are very damp and rotten.” Sailors, by comparison, “work hard at all times of the year, both in the docks and at sea; and live much better, having good provisions of all sorts.”⁹³ It is not difficult to understand the appeal of Cook's case notes for Lind, as hard labor as the most reliable cure for scurvy had long been a guiding principle of the British navy.

Of the outbreaks Cook discussed, the Riga outbreak in 1751 within the local garrison was the most severe. Cook remembered it as the “most dreadful spectacle” that he ever witnessed. “Their rotten gums gangrened, as also their lips, which dropped off; the sphacelus spread to the cheeks, and muscles of their lower jaw; and the jaw-bone in some fell down upon the sternum…. Nothing but death rid the unhappy wretches of their frightful misery.” At Riga, Cook applied the therapeutic treatment “practiced in Russia, especially by the German physicians and surgeons” for “hot or painful scurvy.” It began with a “very gentle purge or two,” followed by a mixture of antiscorbutics, then “fresh flesh-meat every day, and what greens or salads we could procure them. They used the warm bath once or twice a-week.” Finally, Cook “obliged them to use exercise, and to walk about both forenoon and afternoon, when the weather would permit. I allowed them to sleep moderately; and forbid them all dried, salt, and fat meats. Fumigating the wards, is common in all the hospitals in Russia.”⁹⁴ The Riga case was the one in which Cook offered new ideas for the treatment of scurvy. While identifying this scurvy outbreak as hot (i.e., land scurvy), he implemented a regimen that had been developed at sea, including the diet, exercise, and clean air. Without question, his successful treatments in Riga supported Lind's argument that only a single scurvy existed, and not different diseases hiding under a single name.

After his service in Russia, Cook published a narrative of his experiences at work in the country. Unsurprisingly, he discussed his work on scurvy as his most important accomplishment while in Russia, noting the value of his work to Lind in the 1750s. Published in 1770, more than two decades after the outbreaks in Azov or Astrakhan, Cook's assessment of the best therapeutic strategy had not evolved. A poor diet and lack of exercise remained the primary causes of scurvy. Cook described that when he “saw what dismal havock this disease would make in the garrison, I regretted the want of gardens, where fresh herbs, and excellent vegetables might have been nursed up for the use of the sick.” Unfortunately, “these gardens were at the time dressed up for the use of the colonels, lieutenant-colonels, and majors, and the hospitals for which they were designed had not the smallest use of them.” Cook added further incidents of scurvy in this later narrative, including an early episode in 1744, just after arriving in Russia. He treated a young boy in Moscow, who suffered from a “scorbutic cough,” not known as a traditional symptom of scurvy. Cook argued that an earlier doctor had misdiagnosed the cough as a sign of consumption. Cook's regimen of fresh air and light in the boy's bedroom, and a course of light exercise, along with “proper medicines in a few weeks, recovered him to his former state of health.”⁹⁵ It is certainly possible that Cook's narrative was an attempt to gain further notice as an expert on scurvy, as he pushed the boundaries of what the disease was known to be. In this instance, his scurvy therapy resolved a cough; an argument for its value as a practice.

Although Cook sought relevance outside of Russia after his departure from the empire, he had been a significant figure in the Russian medical establishment during his time in service. Before his postings to the military hospitals in Azov, Astrakhan, and Riga, he had been an instructor for military surgeons in St. Petersburg. His scurvy therapeutic regimen was a part of Russian medical practice.⁹⁶ It was not as innovative as he might have preferred for his personal fame, as none of his treatments had not been tried as part of the Second Kamchatka Expedition's search for a cure for scurvy. In his original notes to Lind, Cook confessed he was simply applying the lessons of the “Germanic physicians” working in the country, which included both Gmelin and Steller. Although there was no direct path from their work to Lind's treatise, there was an informal path through the British medical practitioners like Cook sharing these methods.

The middle of the eighteenth century was a pivotal moment for scurvy intervention, particularly for the British Empire during and after the Seven Years’ War with its acquisition of Canada.⁹⁷ Lind may have been concerned about the fate of the British navy, but Russia's officers were no less concerned about the health of their troops. Waxell implemented every possible solution to try to preserve his crew in the north Pacific and reported this information to the Admiralty as part of this duties. Russia's army officers faced similar struggles. C. H. von Manstein, a foreign officer in military service, published a narrative of his experiences with the army during the war with the Ottoman Empire that began in 1736. His troops were plagued by a general fatigue created by “incessant marches.” He concluded, “notwithstanding all that has been said of the Russians and their being so robust and hardy, they are subject to several diseases, as the scurvy and fevers, also in the field to dysentery.” The death toll from the regular scurvy outbreaks in the army could be as high as one-third.⁹⁸ Cook argued that the garrison troops’ lack of exercise was a root cause of the likelihood of suffering from scurvy, but Manstein argued that overwork and a poor diet produced the same results among those same troops. Manstein was also serving before the Second Kamchatka Expedition departed Okhotsk for North America. It is possible that the state of medical knowledge changed in the wake of the return of the expedition, but it is also possible that officers were not as current about disease studies as a physician such as Cook would have been. It may also have been that it was easier for a foreign specialist like Lind to accept Cook's Russian information because it aligned with his assessment of the disease. Confirmation bias is not a new phenomenon, after all. In either case, the state of medical knowledge in Russia was current compared with studies across Europe. These physicians were in regular contact with one another. The challenge for Russia was no different than that in other countries—disseminating the latest information to improve the health of the empire.

While the Second Kamchatka Expedition was an ongoing concern, the Academy of Sciences and the College of Medicine made decided attempts to improve the health of the empire. Cook reflected the general improvement of the health of the military forces, as they developed an active process of recruiting foreign doctors and having them not only serve in military hospitals and with the troops but also train Russian surgeons for duty. His correspondence network brought ­Russian-generated knowledge out to the wider medical community and provided a route for new information and therapies to arrive and be deployed among the military. The academy was no less concerned, as it produced a large compendium of information, the Florinova ekonomiia in 1738. It was the first publication produced in Russia that included specific guidance on treating “the French disease,” at the same moment Steller was observing the damage that had been done by venereal diseases in Kamchakta. According to the manual, the disease “comes from visiting dishonest and impure places” (nechestnykh i nechistnykh mest). The signs of the infection became visible on the body, with excessive heat and restless sleeping, a pale or yellow color for the skin, red stains on the forehead, and sores on the mouth. The academy's recommendation was either a preparation relying on mercury, or a syrup infused with sassafras. Although the original version of the text was published in German by the academy in 1738, which was logical for the extensive staff of Germans working at the academy, the text was published in a Russian translation in 1760 to increase its accessibility.⁹⁹ If the expedition was most successful at demonstrating how complex the population of the Russian Empire was, then the academy was already implementing steps, albeit small ones, to improve health.

The expedition and its work on scurvy was not the only attempt to challenge the criticism of Russia's climate. In the fall of 1739, the Academy of Sciences developed plans to transform the traditional icehouse placed on the Neva River in St. Petersburg with a far more grandiose “Ice Palace” the following winter. The entire enterprise would be documented, including the detailed blueprints of the ambitious construction made of ice, placed on the ice, for the court's entertainment. As the academy's pamphlet on the palace explained, “Ice has hitherto been regarded as a kind of material in which art can only exert little or no effort,” and the ice palace revealed the beautiful “fluidity of water” thanks to the craftsmanship of Russia's artists.¹⁰⁰ The publication by the Academy of Sciences, including the plentiful images, was a strategy to promote Russia's mastery of the winter across Europe. It is hard to say whether it achieved this goal. Britain's diplomats, among the most consistent critics, never once mentioned its construction or the subsequent balls held in its structure.

Physicians and naturalists who spent time in Russia noted its climate was extreme, both hot and cold, and both conditions risked the health of its residents. Humoralism expected temperate balance as the ideal state; any extreme change to one of the nonnaturals (climate, food, or exertion) would be dangerous. Cold caused the putrefaction of the humors inside the body, and, without the ability to manage this condition, illnesses resulted. This knowledge was so widely accepted that these conditions were exploited not only by men such as the British diplomats at the start of the eighteenth century but also by physicians writing in London with only a secondhand knowledge of Russia. The early steps for the Russian medical establishment to apply their knowledge to the empire's health challenges had only begun to be recognized by foreign experts like Linnaeus and Lind.

These small steps were followed by others. In 1760, for example, the Royal Society for the Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce in London debated a recommendation from one its members, as it sought a solution for a successful feed crop for cattle “in those northern Countries.” Working alongside “Mr Kalm … who had been a disciple of Doctor Linnaeus,” they gathered seeds of various grasses from Canada and Siberia and ran a trial in both Sweden and Britain to see if a successful cold crop could be cultivated. The best result of this experiment was “Gennial Vetch from Siberia” (Vicia sativa), which thrived for two years, but “the Cold of the last winter killed all the plants.”¹⁰¹ The failure of that trial raised questions about this botanical knowledge extracted from Siberia, but the fact that the British looked to Russia for potential solutions was a sign of Russia's physicians’ and naturalists’ role as producers of knowledge.