Discovering Vitamins
Scientists first began to wonder about food’s mysterious “accessory factors,” now called vitamins, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Research on the diseases of malnutrition – scurvy, beriberi, pellagra, anemia, and rickets – proved that these ailments are caused by deficiencies in diet. Even so, scientists in the field of nutrition had to fight for recognition of their results, and some even had to do their research in secret.
