A Brief History

Benefits of eating a certain food to maintain health was acknowledged long before vitamins were identified. The ancient Egyptians knew that feeding a patient liver would help cure night blindness, an illness now known to be caused by a vitamin A deficiency. The advancement of ocean voyage during the Renaissance resulted in prolonged periods without access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and made illnesses, such as scurvy, from vitamin deficiency common among ship's crew.

However, in 1906, English biochemist Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins discovered that certain food factors were important to health. The term vitamin originated from “vitamine,” a word first used in 1911 by the Polish scientist Cashmir Funk to designate a group of compounds considered vital for life; each was thought to have a nitrogen-containing component known as an amine. The final e of vitamine was dropped when it was discovered that not all of the vitamins contain nitrogen, and, therefore, not all are amines. The term accessory food factor sometimes is used instead of vitamin to refer to these substances.

In 1912 Hopkins and Funk advanced the vitamin hypothesis of deficiency, a theory that postulates that the absence of sufficient amounts of a particular vitamin in a system may lead to certain diseases. During the early 1900s, through experiments in which animals were deprived of certain types of foods, scientists succeeded in isolating and identifying the various vitamins recognised today.

In 1920, a businessman in China noticed that there existed an important link between foods consumed and a person’s overall well being. In a country where farming played a big role in the lives of its citizens, and where fresh fruits and vegetables were found growing in abundance, people that lived in the countryside enjoyed a healthier life as compared to those who lived in the cities where there was less fresh food.

After a lot of trial and tribulation this Chinese businessman created what was to become the first multivitamin in the year 1934. Of course, many improvements have been made to that early multivitamin as our knowledge of them increased.

Our understanding of how they worked would continue to grow in the 1940s, 1950s 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.

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.

Doctors and researchers 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.