The History of Vitamins
All of us have a fair idea of what vitamins are and what they do to keep us healthy. But do we know their history? The fourteen vitamins where discovered by scientists from 1909 to 1941 . Many were discovered in the process of finding cure to diseases that afflicted a large group of people. Leading the list were: scurvy, beriberi and pellagra.
Researchers determined what was lacking in their diet, and by introducing it to their diet, they found out the cure. Then the substances, now known as vitamins, were isolated from the source diet. The first to be isolated was Vitamin A (Retinol); the last, Vitamin B9 (Folic acid).
Our scientific knowledge of vitamins and their importance to nutrition is relatively young—only a century old. But before the scientists’ discoveries, the relation of diet to diseases was known many centuries before.
History of Vitamins: Scurvy and Vitamin C
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During 1500 BC, in Egypt, the lack of fresh products in winter times caused an outbreak of scurvy . The same disease, scurvy, characterized by massive hemorrhaging that leads to death, was mentioned by Hippocrates in 5th century BC.
In the High Middle Ages, battles were lost by Crusaders due to rampant scurvy among its ranks. Then in the Early Modern Ages, when European colonization required long ocean voyages, ship’s crew suffered vitamin-deficiency related diseases due to lack of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Ferdinand Magellan, the Great Navigator, while crossing the Pacific without landfall for four months and unable to replenish their provisions, lost hundreds of his men not only due starvation but also due to scurvy.
In 1753, the Royal British Navy recommended to its sailors the use of lemons and limes to prevent scurvy. This action was based on the discovery four years earlier by James Lind, a Scottish surgeon, that citrus fruits helped prevent scurvy.
The nutrient in lemons was later isolated as Vitamin C (Ascorbic acid) by the Norwegians A. Hoist and T. Froelich in 1912. Vitamin C was the first vitamin to be artificially synthesized in 1935 through a process invented by Dr. Tadeusz Reichstein, of the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich.
History of Vitamins: Beriberi and Vitamin B
In another navy organization, beriberi was linked to lack of nutrients (later isolated as vitamin B) found in rice bran. This was the conclusion of studies conducted in1884 by Takaki Kanehiro, a British-trained medical doctor of the Japanese Navy.
Among low-ranking crew (and most rice-eating people of East Asia) polished rice, from which nutrient-rich bran was removed, was a staple diet.
Dr. Kanehiro found in his studies that deficiency of nutrients found in the bran was responsible for the beriberi which was endemic among the crew. This was confirmed by Christiaan Eijkman, who later shared the 1929 Nobel Prize for Medicine with Hopkins (for his discoveries of several vitamins).
Some time around 1915–1916, Elmer V. McCollum isolated vitamin B. Later he showed that vitamin B is not a single compound but a complex. He also discovered vitamin during 1912-1914 (with Marguerite Davis as co-discoverer).
A Polish biochemist named Casimir Funk, inspired by Eijkman’s works, discovered the nutrient that prevents or cures beriberi and called it “vitamine”. It was later changed to vitamins. Today, vitamins are being used by millions of people all over the world to keep them strong and healthy.
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