The
History of Vitamins - Vital For Our Health
Vitamins have an extremely long history,
though until relatively recently it was not one that
had been recognized. In ancient times, when mankind
gave up the nomadic lifestyle of the hunter gatherer
and formed early cities and developed the beginnings
of fixed and sustainable agriculture; it was soon
realized and noted by the ancient scribes of Sumeria
(in present day Iraq) that food could affect health
in more subtle ways than to simply keep people
alive.
This had probably already been known by the shaman
priests of even earlier tribes, but in Sumeria, the
city states of Mesopotamia and
ancient Babylon, it was studied in greater detail,
and the results recorded on clay tablets. Sadly, now
most of these have either been destroyed over the
centuries or lie undiscovered beneath desert sands.
Though it is known that in ancient Egypt, certain
foods were recommended for the improvement of night
vision.
So the science of
nutrition had been born, and unfortunately did not
improve on these original insights for a considerable
time. The ancient Greeks, Romans, and later the Arabs
made advances in medicine, but not particularly in
preventing health problems and diseases from occurring
in the first place. Instead they concentrated on the
curing process once the symptoms of the illness were
observable.
Early herbalists with their preventative potions,
were often dismissed (sometimes violently so) as
witches or wizards, and their works was treated with
extreme suspicion. Later, in Europe, it got even worse
with the Church not being fond of discussion of any
sciences, most of which were classified as dangerous
blasphemy. And so millions continued to suffer from
terrible afflictions which could have been prevented
by the light of knowledge.
An Eventual Change for the Better - Scurvy is
Prevented
The change began to come about in the eighteenth
century within the British Empire. Because of its
global spread, the ships on the seas were of prime
importance, and it appalled some caring souls in the
government that the cruel disease of scurvy, which by
now had a three hundred odd year history, and includes
amongst its’ delights: dizziness, listlessness (a lack
of energy), teeth loss, swollen gums and randomly
spontaneous heavy bleeding which is difficult or
impossible to stop; was killing far more British
sailors than were being lost due to enemy action.
Scurvy was a serious problem to ships of all nations
of course, but the British were more determined to do
something about its horrors.
A few years before 1750 a Scottish naval doctor and
surgeon called
James Lind, who was one of those angered and upset
by what he saw aboard ship, was to discover that an
unknown property found in citrus fruit (what we now
know as
Vitamin C) could completely prevent the scurvy
from taking hold. He published his findings in 1753 in
a “Treatise on the Scurvy,” but incredibly his
breakthrough was ignored by most of the Admiralty and
his findings remained not enacted upon until near to
the year 1800. During this gap of years, it is
estimated by some authorities that nearly 100,000
British sailors died because of the scurvy.
When finally the Lords of the Admiralty roused
themselves, the disease was rapidly stamped out, with
other nation’s navies following suit. A side note here
is the creation of the nickname ’Limeys’ as applied to
British people, it coming from the limes collected by
British ships to give to their crew. Although in
actuality, it was more often lemons than limes which
were used.
The War against Beriberi
So nutrition in diet had triumphantly returned, but
still had a fight on its hands to be accepted fully.
The 1880’s saw Dutch scientist
Christiaan Eijkman do much pioneering work with
animals, by altering their diets to produce vitamin
deficient conditions and then reversing this
ill-health by re-altering the content rather than the
amount of their feeding.
Also, in 1906, Britain’s Frederick Hopkins (later
to be knighted) was also convinced of critical ’growth
factors’ within the food we eat. He said that, these
“factors” were essential for life and health and not
otherwise contained in our own makeup or physiology.
Neither could they be produced without chemical
additions from nutrition in diet. Both these men were
to win Nobel prizes for medicine in 1929, but at the
time what was needed for more doctors to pay attention
was provable results on people.
In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the tropical
wasting and paralyzing disease known as beriberi (the
name of which comes from the Singhalese, a language of
Sri Lanka, word ’beri’ which means ’weakness’ and is
now known to be caused by a lack of
Vitamin B) was rampant throughout southern Asia.
No-one had fully considered it might be treatable
through nutrition like scurvy just over a century
earlier until an English doctor by the name of
William Fletcher began his work in Kuala Lumpur,
the capitol of the then British colony of Malaysia.
In 1905, he carried out nutritional experiments on
the inmates of an asylum, instructing them to be fed
with different types of rice (either polished or
unpolished). All else in their diet being the same, he
saw that after a short time, a quarter of those eating
polished rice began to suffer from the effects of
beriberi, whilst only around two percent of those fed
on the unpolished rice exhibited the symptoms
associated with this disease.
Doctor Funk gets it on! As Vitamins are Officially
Born
Seven years later, a doctor called
Casimir Funk, who had been born in Poland, and now
worked at the Lister Institute in London, England;
read Dr. Fletcher’s findings and developed them
further. He examined the unpolished rice husks in fine
detail, and discovered the active properties that were
at work in the prevention of beriberi. He was to name
these as ‘vitamines’.
This word was derived from the Latin ‘vitalis’
meaning ‘vitally important’ and, ‘amines’ which are a
group of chemical compounds of ammonia. Dr. Funk
initially theorized that all dietary additions were
related to ammonia, but this was proved not to be the
case a few years later, and the ‘e’ was dropped to
turn ‘vitamines’ into ‘vitamins’.
The next year (1913) found scientists Lafayette
Mendel and Thomas Osbourne of Yale University,
discovering a growth promoter in butters which
improved the bodily development of rats in the
laboratory. This promoter was coined as ‘fat-soluble
Vitamin A’. ‘A’ because it was the first to be
isolated as a vitamine or vitamin. All were known by
letters to start with as the chemical characteristics
of each would not fully be known until the thirties.
Vitamins were now here to stay but many scientists
still did not appreciate them or their diverse sources
and uses. Most still thought (of those who took
notice) that diseases like scurvy or pellagra (a skin
disease) were the beginnings of vitamin deficiencies,
rather than the signs of long term deficiency and the
approach of death. Other discoveries would help to
inform them better.
Another growth-promoter was discovered in cow’s
milk and named ‘water-soluble Vitamin B’ (vitamins are
all either fat or water soluble); and this was the
first of the many Vitamin B’s. A group of vitamins
that are sourced in similar foodstuffs have closely
related functions in the body, and work better when
each are present.
Milk versus Rickets
In 1922 what was to be known as
Vitamin D was discovered by Edward Mellanby and
the subsequent enriching of milk with this substance
in the United States, played a major part in the
battle against rickets (which is a disease of bone
softening in children, especially in the legs).
In the same year it was seen at the University of
California by Herbert Evans and Katherine Bishop that
rats raised on whole milk were apparently healthy, but
time showed that none could breed. Their further
studies showed what was missing, the fat-soluble
Vitamin E, which was found by them at first in wheat
and green leaves.
What we now know as Vitamin C (the champion in
preventing the scurvy), which was also the first of
the vitamins to be synthesized (made artificially) was
isolated and identified thanks to the independent
efforts of Hungarian Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, who found
it stored in our adrenal glands and won a Nobel prize;
C. King and W. A. Waugh, who worked with lemons to
find the exact same chemical; and Harriet Chick of the
Lister Institute, who also isolated this vitamin in
various other fruits and vegetables.
Vitamin K and its wonderful blood clotting
properties were discovered in the late 1920’s by the
Dane Henrik Dam, who would win a Nobel Prize for
Physiology and Medicine in 1943. In this year also,
the same prize was awarded to American Edward Doisy,
for taking Henrik Dam’s discovery and increasing the
understanding of how it worked chemically.
The Vitamin Pill is Here
So the discoveries continued and there are now a
total of 13 vitamins that are considered to be
indispensable for our health and well-being, with nine
that are water-soluble and four fat-soluble. There
were more, but it became known that many were vitamin
like substances without actually being vitamins. That
is, they were organic compounds responsible for
similar tasks in our bodies, but could be produced by
us ourselves.
Then during the thirties it was found how to
artificially produce the vitamins, thus allowing for
the pharmaceutical companies to begin the large scale
production of purer forms, which in turn enabled the
commercialization of the
'vitamin
pill' now familiar to us all, and the great
profits it could make.
Further Uses
But that was not the end of the historical story.
Knowledge of vitamins and how they worked would
continue to grow in the forties, fifties and beyond.
How and where they all could be stored in and used by
our body metabolism, whether in the blood stream,
glands or organs, muscles or bones, skin, or body
cells; and what else they were capable of in addition
to preventing known diseases and conditions from
history.
Like Canadian doctor
Evan. V. Shute who, with his colleagues,
prescribed extra doses of Vitamin E for his patients
which were suffering from various heart maladies, so
proving vitamins could act like a medicine for
complaints other than those caused by their own
non-presence.
They were also, in later decades thought to slow
the signs of aging and proved to affect how genes
work, and have multiple effects when used in
combination or with extra quantities of
minerals that are also vital for human health.
It was further discovered that different people,
depending on age, gender, or general health or
condition could be more helped by different doses or
combinations and that there was not a ‘one size fits
all’ reality, but that the pressing needs of an
individual’s nutrition can differ comparatively
widely, and that excess alcohol or tobacco use can
render vitamins far less effective.
It was also later found that vitamins themselves
can cause illness or counteract the beneficial effects
of their kin when taken to excess in mega dosage,
which can produce toxins because of the body’s
inability to quickly use up the fat-soluble branch of
the vitamin family. Too much of a good thing being
almost as dangerous as not enough.
And doctors today continue to learn many more new
facts about vitamins; for use in therapy and to
possibly better combat the scourge of cancer, and to
aid the work of other medicines in our blood.
So the story of vitamins and their use is an
ongoing one, and our lives continue to be improved
daily by our friend the vitamin!
For more information on Vitamin Supplements please,
visit: Vitamin
Supplements
About The Author
Matt Jacks is a successful
freelance
copywriter who enjoys working from home. He
provides tips and advice for consumers purchasing
weight and womens health,
multi vitamins benefits and
Tempurpedic mattresses ratings. His numerous
articles offer moneysaving tips and valuable insight
on typically confusing topics.
This article on the
"History of Vitamins" reprinted with permission.
© 2004 - Freelancers-wanted.com.
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