Gold prospectors buy citrus fruit from a street vendor, 1849. Scurvy was not confined to the sea. Prospectors during the California and Yukon gold rushes fought off the disease, as did soldiers during the Crimean War. And even though we now understand both cause and cure, scurvy persists. In the past few years cases have cropped up in poor communities and among people with deficient diets in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.