Sepsis -- your grandparents called it blood poisoning, and it's a nasty and often fatal condition. Treatment is arduous and often fails.
UNLESS you are treated with high-dose intravenous vitamin C (20,000 mg - 100,000 mg daily) or, many reports suggest, with 6 or so grams of lipospheric or liposomal vitamin C per day, orally.
ThIs link covers a bit of history on the use of vitamin C to cure scurvy and viruses, and contains two YouTube videos -- only one of which (the second one) is still available. The vid is well worth watching; it's about a family that saved their husband / father's life by fighting to get a hospital to give high-dose intravenous C to the patient, which was finally begun at the point where the hospital was planning to turn off his life support because he was at death's door and couldn't POSSIBLY get well. (The man had swine flu and leukemia, not sepsis).
Direct YouTube link for the embedded video: Vitamin C: the miracle Swine Flu cure
You can see them on the inside of the glass when the liquid evaporates.