History on the nomenclature of Vitamins. Early studies showed - TopicsExpress

History on the nomenclature of Vitamins. Early studies showed that there was something in milk that was essential, in very small amounts, for the growth of animals fed on a diet consisting of purified fat, carbohydrate, protein, and mineral salts. Two factors were found to be essential: one was found in the cream and the other in the watery part of milk. Logically, they were called factor A (fat-soluble, in the cream) and factor B (water-soluble, in the watery part of the milk). Factor B was identified chemically as an amine, and in 1913 the name “vitamin” was coined for these “vital amines.” Further studies showed that “vitamin B” was a mixture of a number of compounds, with different actions in the body, and so they were given numbers as well: vitamin B1, vitamin B2, and so on. There are gaps in the numerical order of the B vitamins. When what might have been called vitamin B3 was discovered, it was found to be a chemical compound that was already known, nicotinic acid. It was therefore not given a number. Other gaps are because compounds that were assumed to be vitamins and were given numbers, such as B4 and B5, were later shown either not to be vitamins, or to be vitamins that had already been described by other workers and given other names. Vitamins C, D and E were named in the order of their discovery. The name “vitamin F” was used at one time for what we now call the essential fatty acids; “vitamin G” was later found to be what was already known as vitamin B2. Biotin is still sometimes called vitamin H. Vitamin K was discovered by Henrik Dam, in Denmark, as a result of studies of disorders of blood coagulation, and he named it for its function: koagulation in Danish.