Nutrient Deficiency Diseases - Early Vitamin Deficiency Diseases

Polish-born Casimir Funk (1884-1967) originated the word vitamin in 1912, spelling it as vitamine, because he thought they were part of a group of organic compounds containing nitrogen, called amines. The final -e was later dropped in 1920 at the suggestion of the English nutritionist Jack Cecil Drummond who pointed out that these trace-like substances found only in food and essential for good health were not always amines. By 1914 Funk theorized that beriberi, scurvy, and pellagra were caused by a vitamin deficiency.