In this week’s Sound Bites: The A, B, C of vitamins, with Swetha Sivakumar

To understand why the list looks as it does, we must dive into the history of how vitamins were discovered. As with so many scientific discoveries, this is a tale of competing scientists, clashing egos and mistaken assumptions.

By the mid-1800s, scientists had discovered that pathogens were responsible for several of the world’s deadliest diseases. If typhoid, diphtheria and the plague were caused by microbes, patchy skin, failing eyesight etc probably were too, they reasoned. So, for decades, symptoms of vitamin deficiencies were mistakenly attributed to germs.

By the late-1800s, some scientists were starting to question this. When they took samples of blood from patients and injected them into lab animals, the lab animals developed no symptoms. Could it be that these people were missing something in their diet instead?

After six years of grain-related experiments, Dutch physician Dr Christiaan Eijkman reported in 1895 that chickens that ate polished rice developed beriberi. In response, one of his colleagues remarked that perhaps Dr Eijkman had suffered brain damage from eating too much rice himself. Dr Eijkman had the last laugh. It turned out he was right; diet held the key. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1929 for his contributions to the discovery of “vitamins”.

But how did they get that name? American biochemist Casimir Funk coined the term “vitamine” while working to isolate thiamine, in 1912. The term was a portmanteau of “vita” (Latin for “important to life”) and “amine” (a specific kind of molecule group, which Funk believed was present in all vitamins). Even though it was soon established that not all vitamins contained amines, the name stuck.

Originally, Funk named vitamines for the disease caused by their deficiency: “scurvy vitamine”, “beriberi vitamine” etc. Then, in 1916, fellow biochemist Elmer McCollum spearheaded a renaming exercise. He published an article showing that when rats were fed a diet heavy in lard and olive oil, they died. But with the addition of a tiny amount of butterfat, they survived. McCollum called the vitamin in butterfat “Fat-soluble A”. He called the beriberi vitamin “Water-soluble B”. Soon, Vitamins A, B, C, D and E had been christened.

As the list grew, a sort of gold rush began. Discovering new vitamins had become a path to fame and riches. Amid the frenzy, vitamins F, G, H, I, J and more were named. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that some were not vitamins; they were dropped from the list. Others were reclassified as types of Vitamin B (a group of vitamins classed together because they are all crucial to metabolic function). Meanwhile, within the B group, it was found that B4, B8, B10 and B11 were inessential. And so it was that gaps formed in a once-sequential list.

Vitamin K has a unique story amid all this. When Danish scientist Henrik Dam discovered it in 1929, he decided not to enter the alphabetical fray and instead named it for its property of causing blood to clot (“koagulation” in Danish). He too won a Nobel Prize for his discovery. (There have, in fact, been seven Nobel prizes awarded to scientists working on vitamins.)

In her book Vitamania (2016), journalist Catherine Price writes of another twist: the disdain that parts of the scientific community had for the word “vitamin” in the early 1900s. What was this strange slang; it could not possibly survive, it was felt. American chemist Russell Chittenden predicted that the word vitamin would be relegated to the “musty company of phlogistic, humors, animalcules and kindred antiquated terms”. But the term survived, and thrived. After all, who would go the chemist shop and ask for cholecalciferol or cobalamin? We just look for Vitamin D and B12 instead.

(To reach Swetha Sivakumar with questions or feedback, email [email protected])