History of Vitamins

The history of vitamins is relatively new. By this we mean that our knowledge of the chemical composition of vitamins and their importance in nutrition is relatively young.

However, the history of deficiencies - and their effects on our health - goes back centuries.

History of Vitamins: History of Scurvy

Within the history of vitamins, Scurvy is probably the first illness to be recognized as a nutritional deficiency disorder...

...though as you will see it was not right away.

The main symptom of scurvy is massive hemorrhaging - which obviously, is not a good thing.

Your arteries - lacking sufficient vitamin C - begin to pit and then finally break open causing internal hemorrhaging. Prior to this, you would feel exhausted and weak, your gums would start to bleed, and diarrhea would set in. Death will be the final result.

All this from a vitamin deficiency, which means not having enough of it in your body.

Doesn't it make you wonder what other nutrients may be missing from our diets today? ...plenty actually.

Scurvy Throughout History

Hippocrates - the famous Greek doctor - first described scurvy as bleeding gums, hemorrhaging and death in the 5th century BC.

Outbreaks of scurvy were reported in 1500 BC in Egypt during the winters when fresh produce was scarce.

In 1250, during the Crusades, rampant scurvy forced the retreat and eventual capture of St. Louis and his knights. However, it was during the age of exploration and extended sea voyages that scurvy earned its deadly reputation.

Scurvy's First Cure

Native Americans had concocted the first cure for scurvy. They drank a tea consisting of pine bark and needles.

The French explorer Jacques Cartier - who had lost 25 members of his crew before the natives taught him this remedy - brought this marvelous cure back to France in 1536 ...where it was immediately dismissed by the medical profession who knew better than a bunch of wild savages.

Moreover, our - American - medical model says that anything natural cannot cure!

More History on Scurvy

As early as 1593, during a voyage to the South Pacific, Sir Richard Hawkins - an Englishman - recommended the following treatment for scurvy:

However, it wasn't until 1747, when the Scottish physician James Lind - aboard the ship Salisbury experimented with a number of food combinations on patients suffering from scurvy - that the British Admiralty started to pay attention.

By now if our calculations are accurate - and they are - that's 211 years after Jacques Cartier came back home with a cure for this disease!

Lind discovered that those who were given an orange and lemon combination recovered quite swiftly.

So that's the end of it right? Not quite. Even with this information, it wasn't till 1770 - let's add to 211 years another 23 years - that the British Navy began recommending that ships carry sufficient lime juice for all.

Scurvy in the USA

When the colonies revolted, the Colonial Army used fruits to keep their soldiers healthy, while some were treated to the Native American infusion of pine bark and needles when fruits were out of season.

Louis H. Roddis' A Short History of Nautical Medicine tells us:

Do you think there could be today some "diseases" which are nothing but deficiencies of some nutrients???? Hum???

There is more.

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History of Vitamins: History of Beriberi

Here is further information on history of vitamins and their deficiencies.

In the late 1800s the Dutch physician Christiaan Eijkman discovered that substituting unpolished rice for polished rice would prevent beriberi - a terrible disease which caused anemia and paralysis and was found mainly among the poor.

But it wasn't till 1911, when a Polish chemist discovered the actual substance in unpolished rice that prevented the disease that the medical community took heed.

The substance that was found was categorized as an amine, a type of nitrogen-containing compound.

At this time, it was realized that it was a substance vital to proper body function and therefore it was named "vital amine" or vitamin.

But not all of these vitamins were vital amines. Ascorbic acid for example isn't an amine. It is an acid. So what?

Well, by then the word vitamin became popular so the name stuck.

Christiaan Eijkman Receives a Nobel Prize

Ironically, it was Eijkman who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1929 for the discovery of vitamins, when he had actually spent a good portion of his career trying to prove that beriberi was caused by an infection.

How on earth did he get a Nobel Prize?

Well...

...it seems that he discovered that it was a particular B vitamin that caused beriberi - even though he, himself, didn't actually accept his own test results for a time - called B1 or thiamine, a true amine as you can see from its name.

Vitamin Hypothesis of Deficiency

In 1912 the British biochemist Sir Fredrick Hopkins - one of the founders of modern biochemistry - amongst others, proposed the Vitamin Hypothesis of Deficiency, theorizing that the absence of a particular vitamin from one's diet could lead to certain diseases.

Nowadays a non FDA approved substance - this means a natural substance - is said to not be able to cure anything. So it would be against the law to say that water "cures" dehydration or even that vitamin C "cures" scurvy. In our medical paradigm only drugs cure.

As a matter of fact, natural and cure cannot even be used in the same sentence according to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act also called DSHEA.

For example, say you had cancer and you used a natural treatment, you could not say: "I cured my cancer by using X." Very big no-no.

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History of Vitamins: History of Pellagra

And finally in the history of vitamins, here is our last story of vitamin deficiencies.

Pellagra is a disease that was common throughout the world, and still is in some parts.

In the USA, it had been a little too common in the poor south, and with the economic downturn and crop failures in the early 1900s, pellagra had blossomed into a full blown epidemic.

The disease causes skin rashes, especially when exposed to sunlight, mouth lesions, diarrhea, and if left untreated long enough, mental deterioration.

Dr. Joseph Goldberger

In 1914, the Surgeon General appointed Dr Joseph Goldberger - a member of the public health service for fifteen years - to tackle the crisis of pellagra.

Goldberger first merely observed the disease. He took notes, asked questions, and watched. He noted that the diet of the poor in the region consisted of cornbread, molasses, and some pork fat.

The poorer the people the more likely they were to get pellagra.

Goldberger noted that institutions, prisons, orphanages, and asylums had many cases of pellagra.

At the time, the germ theory of disease had taken hold of medical thought, and it was assumed that pellagra was an infectious disease. Additionally, society is hardly ever ready to accept the idea that poverty could possibly cause a disease. So, when Goldberger concluded that pellagra was a nutritional disease, the medical community was less than happy to receive this news.

Dr. Goldberger Proves His Theory

In order to prove his theory, Dr. Goldberger approached a prison to ask their aid in conducting a nutritional study. The prisoners who volunteered for the experiment would be pardoned. It was a "farm prison" and their basic nutrition was good, there were no cases of pellagra.

Goldberger separated his two groups and gave his experimental group the diet of the southern poor:

Sure enough, within a few months, his experimental group came down with pellagra.

Then, to test whether pellagra was infectious, the researchers tried to "catch" the disease from the ill prisoners, but they were unable.

Finally, when given meat, fresh vegetables, and milk, the pellagra symptoms all vanished.

Still, given this evidence, the medical community was unwilling to accept his study. No surprise here, this is still the case today. Goldberger tried repeatedly to convince others, but eventually gave up and spent the rest of his life looking for the "exact" nutritional factor that caused pellagra, but it would be discovered only after his death.

In 1937, Conrad Elvehjem discovered that a B vitamin, nicotinic acid - or niacin, prevented and cured pellagra in dogs.

In the 1930s many more discoveries were made in the world of biochemical nutrition, all the vitamins were named and classified.

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History of Vitamins: The RDA - Recommended Daily Allowance

Today, we have the Required Daily Allowances put forward by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council.

The RDAs are however the minimum wage of nutrition: you can barely survive on them.

For example, the RDA for vitamin C will keep you from getting scurvy, but doesn't protect you well from the onslaught of environmental toxins. For that you must have a good and potent anti-oxidant!

According to Albert Szent-Gyorgyi - the Nobel-prize winner for his discovery on vitamin C:

Your dog synthesizes - creates - the human equivalent of 2800 milligrams of vitamin C per day.

Yet our government, at the prodding of the medical community, recommends a mere 60 milligrams per day for human beings. What's wrong with this picture?

A whole lot!

There are vital nutrients today which were discovered over 20 years ago with a proven track record. Yet, the "stories" are dismissed by many as "hear-say" or placebo effect.

Well, we are very happy to spend money on a so-called "placebo" which restores and maintains our health and the health of our loved ones.

What about you?

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