Vitamins and beriberi
Vitaminas: el beriberi como carencia nutricional
- Date
- 1897-1912 · confidence high
- Place
- Batavia (Jakarta), Dutch East Indies / Lister Institute, London
- Credited to
- Christiaan Eijkman, Gerrit Grijns, Frederick Hopkins, Casimir Funk
- People
- 👤 Casimir Funk1884–1967👤 Christiaan Eijkman1858–1930👤 Frederick Gowland Hopkins1861–1947👤 Gerrit Grijns1865–1944
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Eijkman showed that chickens fed polished rice fell ill and that bran cured them; Hopkins postulated 'accessory factors' and Funk coined 'vitamine' (1912). Diseases could be caused by the absence, not the presence, of something.
Nobel Prize 1929 to Eijkman and Hopkins.
What it led to
- scientific nutrition
- food fortification and eradication of rickets, pellagra and beriberi
- the supplement industry
- the biochemistry of coenzymes
Built on
- Takaki's dietary prevention of beriberi1884
- scurvy and Lind (1747)
- Takaki in the Japanese navy
Made possible
- Vitamin A, first fat-soluble vitamin identified1913
- synthetic thiamine
- fortified foods