121. Animal Remedy for Scorbutus in Greenland. — Bertelsen states that scorbutus is prevalent in Greenland, the very name Eskimo meaning “eaters of raw meat.” But, he adds, the natives have empirically found a remedy for the scurvy, namely, chewing the skin of the narwhal, the unicorn-whale. He describes research, with illustrations, showing that the skin of this fish contains a remarkable amount of glycogen, thus supplying sufficient quantities of a carbohydrate to cure the scorbutus. The walrus liver also contains much glycogen.

I can see why we no longer call them Eskimos — although that etymology doesn’t seem to be correct:

Two principal competing etymologies have been proposed for the name “Eskimo”, both derived from the Innu-aimun (Montagnais) language, an Algonquian language of the Atlantic Ocean coast. The most commonly accepted today appears to be the proposal of Ives Goddard at the Smithsonian Institution, who derives the term from the Montagnais word meaning “snowshoe-netter” or “to net snowshoes.” The word assime·w means “she laces a snowshoe” in Montagnais. Montagnais speakers refer to the neighbouring Mi’kmaq people using words that sound very much like eskimo.

In 1978, Jose Mailhot, a Quebec anthropologist who speaks Montagnais, published a paper suggesting that Eskimo meant “people who speak a different language”. French traders who encountered the Montagnais in the eastern areas, adopted their word for the more western peoples and spelled it as Esquimau in a transliteration.

Some people consider Eskimo derogatory because it is widely perceived to mean “eaters of raw meat” in Algonkian languages common to people along the Atlantic coast. One Cree speaker suggested the original word that became corrupted to Eskimo might have been askamiciw (which means “he eats it raw”); the Inuit are referred to in some Cree texts as askipiw (which means “eats something raw”).

I’m shocked that a scientific journal referred to the narwhal as a fish.

It’s fascinating to see that scurvy still wasn’t understood in the early 20th Century:

In 1927, Hungarian biochemist Szent-Györgyi isolated a compound he called “hexuronic acid”. Szent-Györgyi suspected hexuronic acid, which he had isolated from adrenal glands, to be the antiscorbutic agent, but he could not prove it without an animal-deficiency model. In 1932, the connection between hexuronic acid and scurvy was finally proven by American researcher Charles Glen King of the University of Pittsburgh. King’s laboratory was given some hexuronic acid by Szent-Györgyi and soon established that it was the sought-after anti-scorbutic agent. Because of this, hexuronic acid was subsequently renamed ascorbic acid.

“…“the skin [of the narwhal] contains a remarkable amount of glycogen, thus supplying sufficient quantities of a carbohydrate to cure the scorbutus…”

Ah, carbohydrate is a scurvy cure. I guess that’s why they call us “crackers”, eh?

More seriously, glycogen formed by eating protein and gluconeogenesis as well as ‘eating carbs’. I don’t understand the vibe here. Sure, we should all store glycogen. And if we eat stored glycogen (internally or externally) we benefit. What’s all this hissing and spitting and quibbling for?

Then I went to the site you linked, and watched the frothing, snarky, do nothing backbiters have at each other in comments and I figured it out.

The Crohn’s case in particular experienced drastic setbacks when he consumed plant matter. This is a common pattern it seems with anecdotes of Crohn’s treatment online using low carb dieting.
http://crohnscarnivore.blogspot.com/
https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/comments/531fr2/i_have_crohns_disease_i_cant_eat_dairy_fruits_or/
etc.

More important, to me, is that authors like the above seem to completely reject or ignore a vast amount of anecdotal evidence of people radically improving their health through all-meat diets.

See:
Amber O’Hearn
http://www.ketotic.org/ (One of the best science blogs on the Internet)
http://www.empiri.ca/
http://www.meandmydiabetes.com/2017/05/20/amber-ohearn-carnivore-health/
She lost a lot of weight and overcame acute mental health symptoms, which become present again if she eats any plants.

Interviews and testimonials here:
https://zerocarbzen.com/

Thousands of people in this Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/zioh2/

Owsley “The Bear” Stanley:
http://highsteaks.com/carnivores-creed/owsley-the-bear-stanley/
http://activenocarber.myfreeforum.org/ftopic22-0-0-asc-.php
He is better known as the LSD manufacturer and Grateful Dead sound engineer. He lived a long healthy life, the last 50 years of which were on an all-meat diet.

Shawn Baker:
https://twitter.com/SBakerMD
This 50-year old orthopedic surgeon is also a lifelong athlete. He did much better on keto, but on the switch to all-meat, he has only gotten leaner and stronger. He is now leading an online study called “nequalsmany” to try to quantify this anecdotal data, with hundreds of participants. http://nequalsmany.com/

Other groups around the world historically ate all-meat diets, too.
http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/all-meat-diets/

Also see this to help understand why vegetables are not necessary or even necessarily beneficial (and perhaps even very costly and damaging):
http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/food/vegetables/

So did the Inuit maybe have some carbs in their diet from the animal tissue they ate? Sure, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Is there still substantial evidence from an incredible number of people’s real lived experience, including dozens of people I’ve personally witness transform? Yes.

Honest scientists should be investigating all-meat diets with intense rigor, and the failure to do so is a tragedy for modern medicine.