Scurvy, in Aajonus's framework, is not simply a vitamin C deficiency disease in the conventional sense. It is a form of malnutrition, specifically a failure of assimilation and metabolism, characterized by a cluster of recognizable physical signs: swollen and bleeding gums, rough dry discolored skin, tenderness of joints and muscles, bruising easily, poor healing of wounds, and susceptibility to frequent detoxification processes (what conventional medicine calls infections, parasites, viral activity, etc.).

The critical distinction Aajonus makes is that scurvy occurs not because a person fails to consume enough vitamin C from citrus or vegetables, but because the individual lacks the ability to properly assimilate cooked sugars and cooked fat. This is a metabolic and enzymatic failure, not a simple dietary insufficiency that can be corrected by adding orange juice or ascorbic acid supplements. This framing shifts the entire understanding of the disease from a nutrient-input problem to a digestive and enzymatic incapacity problem rooted in the consumption of cooked and processed foods.

Aajonus also identifies a secondary causal factor: a lack of enzyme-mutations for eating cooked yellow foods. In some individuals, cooked yellow foods actively rob blood sugars that are needed throughout the body, thereby contributing to the scurvy state. This is presented as an additional pathway, not the primary one, but a factor that can independently or additively trigger or worsen scurvy.

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Aajonus identifies multiple layers of causation for scurvy:

Primary Cause, Inability to Assimilate Cooked Sugars and Cooked Fat: Scurvy occurs in individuals who lack the ability to assimilate cooked sugars and cooked fat properly. This is not a universal deficiency but a specific metabolic incapacity that certain individuals carry. When cooked sugars and cooked fats are consumed but cannot be properly metabolized, the body is deprived of the functional nutrients, including whatever the equivalent of what conventional science calls vitamin C, that it needs to maintain connective tissue integrity, immune function, wound healing, and vascular stability.

Secondary Cause, Lack of Enzyme-Mutations for Cooked Yellow Foods: A lack of enzyme-mutations for eating cooked yellow foods is sometimes also a factor in scurvy. In these individuals, cooked yellow foods rob blood sugars that are needed throughout the body. This creates a systemic blood sugar deficit that compounds the malnutrition state, contributing to the full scurvy picture.

The Pasteurization Connection: Aajonus cites extensive historical documentation connecting pasteurization to the induction of scurvy, particularly infantile scurvy. He references Dr. A. F. Hess, who proved that many infants developed scurvy on a diet of pasteurized milk. The form of scurvy took some months to develop and was termed subacute, Hess considered it not only the most common form of scurvy but also the one that passes most often unrecognized. These infants were cured of scurvy when raw milk was substituted.

Aajonus references the Berlin case of 1901 in which a large dairy established a pasteurization plant raising all milk to a temperature of approximately 140°F (60°C). After an interval of months, infantile scurvy was reported from various sources throughout the city. Neumann recorded that he and two other doctors had seen only 32 cases of scurvy from 1896 to 1900. That number suddenly rose to 83 cases in 1901 and 1902. An investigation was made, pasteurization was discontinued, and the number of cases decreased as quickly as they had increased. Cases of infantile scurvy were marked by susceptibility to infection, abdominal cramps, nasal diphtheria, furunculosis of the skin, and pneumonia in advanced cases.

Aajonus also references Dr. Pottenger's work, stating that Pottenger proved there is a deficiency disease similar to vitamin C deficiency (scurvy) that can be cured by giving an endocrine product that contains no vitamin C. Pottenger proved that raw milk naturally contains that endocrine nutrient and that pasteurized milk does not. He proved that raw milk reversed and prevented scurvy. This is a significant expansion: the anti-scurvy factor in raw milk is not simply ascorbic acid but an endocrine nutrient that is destroyed by pasteurization.

Furthermore, it was reported in 1942 that grazing cows produced as much vitamin C as does the entire citrus crop, and that most of it is lost as the result of pasteurization.

The Destruction of Vitamin C Through Cooking: Aajonus notes specifically, in the context of traditional Eskimo cultures that remained free of scurvy, that this tradition prevented scurvy because the vitamin C in meat and fish is destroyed by cooking. Eskimos of Arctic regions, where no plants were available much of the year, ate a lot of raw meat and fish. This is the dietary practice that protected them from scurvy, not citrus consumption, but raw animal food consumption.

The Frozen Meat Experiment, A Demonstration: In Aajonus's own experiments with dogs, he divided them into two groups: one group eating frozen raw meat, the other eating the same meat non-frozen. The group that ate it frozen started developing skin problems, some of them within three weeks, all of them within six weeks, mainly extreme within 10 to 12 weeks. One of them developed what looked like scurvy. Some were losing their hair; two of them lost their hair entirely. The group that ate it non-frozen, not one problem. Their coats were beautiful. This demonstrated to Aajonus that freezing meat degrades something essential in the raw food, something the body requires and that, when absent, produces scurvy-like conditions.

The Vitamin C in Raw Meat, Superior Absorption: Aajonus states directly and with considerable emphasis that you can assimilate more vitamin C from a pound of meat than from five oranges. He attributes this finding to the archaeological research of Vladimir Stefansson (whom Aajonus sometimes spells as "Bladimir Stefansson"), who worked for the U.S. government and studied people living with Eskimos. Aajonus states: the only food that has been proved to reverse scurvy in one and a half days is raw meat. He also states elsewhere that raw meat can reverse scurvy in one fifth of the time it takes using oranges or lemon juice.

Aajonus cites the records housed at Dartmouth University under Stefansson's research. He describes a specific case: an Arctic sea-captain who ingested high amounts of vitamin C did not reverse his scurvy. After the captain ate raw meat for several days, he completely healed.

The endocrine and enzymatic integrity of raw animal food, meat, fish, raw milk, is what provides bioavailable anti-scurvy factors. These are largely or completely destroyed by cooking, pasteurization, and freezing.

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Scurvy sits within multiple causal principles simultaneously in Aajonus's framework:

Cooked Food: The primary cause is the consumption of cooked sugars, cooked fats, and cooked yellow foods, as well as pasteurized milk. Pasteurization specifically destroys the endocrine nutrient that prevents scurvy, as well as the naturally occurring vitamin C analog in raw milk. The Berlin 1901 case is the most dramatic demonstration of how introducing pasteurization directly induced epidemic infantile scurvy.

Raw Food: The correction and prevention of scurvy is rooted entirely in the consumption of raw animal foods, particularly raw meat, raw fish, raw milk, and to a lesser extent fresh raw plant foods. Raw food is not simply "better" in a general sense; it is the specific vehicle for the bioavailable anti-scurvy factors that cooking destroys.

Terrain Theory / Root Cause: The underlying condition is enzymatic, a failure of enzyme-mutations for handling cooked food. Some individuals simply do not carry the enzymatic adaptations required to extract functional nutrition from cooked sugars, cooked fats, or cooked yellow foods. Their terrain is incompatible with cooked food in ways that produce this specific deficiency state.

Detoxification: The susceptibility to frequent detoxification (what conventional medicine calls infections, parasites, virus, etc.) is listed as a symptom of scurvy, not as a separate disease process. This is important, Aajonus is reframing what appear to be infectious processes as detoxification events happening in a body compromised by scurvy-induced malnutrition.

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In Aajonus's framework, each of the conventional symptoms of scurvy is a manifestation of the deeper metabolic failure to assimilate cooked sugars and cooked fats:

Swollen and bleeding gums: A sign of connective tissue breakdown from lack of bioavailable anti-scurvy factors in the diet. The gum tissue cannot maintain integrity because the nutrients required, present in raw animal foods and raw milk but destroyed by cooking and pasteurization, are absent.

Rough, dry, discolored skin: The skin reflects the body's inability to properly maintain and regenerate epithelial tissue under conditions of cooked-food malnutrition. In the dog experiment, skin disorders were among the first signs of scurvy-like conditions when frozen meat was fed.

Tenderness of joints and muscles: Connective tissue and collagen-like structures throughout the body are compromised by the inability to assimilate proper building blocks from a cooked-food diet.

Bruising easily: Vascular fragility arising from the breakdown of connective tissue integrity when anti-scurvy nutrients are absent or non-bioavailable.

Poor healing of wounds: Without the raw enzymatic and nutritional factors present in raw animal foods and raw dairy, wound-healing mechanisms are impaired.

Susceptibility to frequent detoxification (infections, parasites, virus, etc.): Aajonus reframes what appears as immune weakness and infection-proneness as the body's detoxification processes becoming uncontrolled or overwhelming when the nutritional foundation is undermined by scurvy-inducing dietary patterns.

Regarding infantile scurvy specifically, Aajonus cites Neumann's documentation that infantile scurvy cases were marked by susceptibility to infection, abdominal cramps, nasal diphtheria, furunculosis of the skin, and pneumonia in advanced cases. These are understood in his framework as the full expression of what happens when a body, in this case an infant's body, is fed pasteurized milk from which all anti-scurvy factors have been destroyed.

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Aajonus provides a layered, sequential protocol for resolving scurvy:

Immediate Relief, Days:

The first step is to eat plenty of fresh unripe fruit and fresh parsley leaves. This usually relaxes symptoms in a few days. The word "unripe" is specific and deliberate, unripe fruit carries different sugar profiles and different enzymatic content than ripe fruit, and in Aajonus's framework this distinction matters for how the body processes the sugars involved.

Fresh parsley leaves are specified, not dried parsley, not parsley extract, but fresh leaves. Parsley is consistently described by Aajonus as one of the primary vegetables for blood health and mineral activity, with sodium content that interfaces with blood chemistry.

Processing Stored Cooked Sugars, Concurrent:

Eating plenty of unheated honey helps the utilization or elimination of stored processed sugars such as glycogen. This is an important step because the body of a person with scurvy has accumulated improperly processed cooked sugars, the honey, being unheated, provides the enzymatic support to either properly utilize or clear out these stored toxic or non-functional sugar compounds. The honey must be unheated, this is non-negotiable in Aajonus's framework, as heating destroys the very enzymes that make honey therapeutically useful in this context.

Primary Correction, The Raw Diet:

Then eating a balanced raw diet that includes raw meat corrects scurvy. This is the definitive corrective step. Raw meat is the most important single food for correcting scurvy because: - A pound of raw meat contains more absorbable vitamin C than five oranges - Raw meat has been documented to reverse scurvy in one and a half days (per Stefansson's research at Dartmouth) - Raw meat reverses scurvy in one fifth the time of oranges or lemon juice - Raw meat provides bioavailable anti-scurvy factors in their enzymatically intact form that cooking destroys

The diet must be balanced, meaning it includes not just raw meat but the full range of raw foods appropriate to the Primal Diet framework.

Raw Milk as a Specific Anti-Scurvy Food:

Raw milk both reverses and prevents scurvy, according to the work Aajonus cites. Pasteurized milk not only fails to prevent scurvy but causes it. The active anti-scurvy factor in raw milk is described as an endocrine nutrient, not simply vitamin C, that is present in raw milk and destroyed by pasteurization. Therefore, raw milk is a specific corrective food, not merely a general nutritive one.

Reference to Additional Protocol:

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Days, Symptom Relief: Eating plenty of fresh unripe fruit and fresh parsley leaves usually relaxes symptoms in a few days. This is the fastest symptomatic relief available in the food protocol.

Days (1–2), Full Reversal with Raw Meat: Aajonus states, drawing on Stefansson's research documented in the annals of Dartmouth University, that the only food proved to reverse scurvy in one and a half days is raw meat. This is the fastest known resolution timeline in his framework. He also states raw meat reverses scurvy in one fifth the time of oranges or lemon juice, meaning that if citrus takes, say, a week to produce meaningful reversal, raw meat does so in roughly one to two days.

The Arctic sea-captain case: after the captain ate raw meat for several days, he completely healed. This was despite the fact that high amounts of vitamin C supplementation had failed to reverse his scurvy.

Days to Weeks, Infant Scurvy Resolution: In the cases Aajonus cites regarding infantile scurvy caused by pasteurized milk, infants were cured of scurvy when raw milk was substituted. No specific timeline is given for the infant cases beyond that the resolution was clear and attributable directly to the dietary change. The Berlin 1901 case showed the number of scurvy cases decreased as quickly as they had increased once pasteurization was discontinued.

Full Correction, Ongoing Raw Diet: The complete and lasting correction of scurvy requires eating a balanced raw diet that includes raw meat. This implies a sustained commitment rather than a short-term intervention, the short-term interventions (fresh unripe fruit, parsley, unheated honey, raw meat) address the acute state, while the balanced raw diet is what prevents recurrence by addressing the underlying metabolic condition.

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