Books - Vitamins History

Product Description:
Sunlight is a vital component of good health. Like plants that thrive in the sun, we humans too depend on sunlight, in our case for the production of Vitamin D. In the past few decades, however, cultural trends have steered us away from sun exposure. From fear of the potential dangers of UV radiation and the heavy promotion of sunscreen products to artificial work and recreational environments centered on virtual reality, we are all spending much more time indoors and away from the sun. What are the health consequences?

In this informative overview of an often-neglected topic, historian Laurie Winn Carlson examines the historical and cultural factors that have created our indoor lifestyles and the medical evidence that suggests we need to get out in the sun.

She begins by tracing the behavior patterns that have caused a shift indoors. She notes that it was common decades ago for children to spend hours playing outside. Now the lure of video games and heavy sunscreen use have changed all that. Adults, also, live and work in the perpetual twilight of electric lighting. Though we feel comfortable, there is evidence that our bodies have not really adjusted to a lifestyle that is less than a century old.

Carlson explains the growing body of research that challenges government and health industry warnings against the dangers of sunlight. For example, the production of Vitamin D from sun exposure is crucial to maintaining the body's calcium levels, an important factor for healthy bones, especially as we age. There is also evidence of the sun's beneficial effects on psychological disorders such as seasonal depression or difficulty sleeping.

She concludes by arguing for a balanced approach to sun exposure. Although the risk of skin cancers should not be ignored, total avoidance of the sun can be just as risky to our health.




Customer Review: Vitamin D in Human History and Culture:
Sometimes the obvious is what we overlook. In this study Professor Carlson shows that both ancient and modern societies have neglected the importance of sunlight on human health. Too many people suffer the tragic consequences of insufficient vitamin D. Even people who live in desert areas like the Middle East, hide their bodies from the sun and therefore suffer from vitamin D insufficiency.
This book is a wake-up call to us all to include more sun in our daily lives. Professor Carlson's research shows that when we overlook the importance of the sun, our bones either fail to develop or they inevitably deteriorate. This book should be read by young people who want to have long, healthy lives and by people over forty who begin to feel aging. For both, the cheapest remedy in the world is daily sunlight.

Product Description:




Customer Review: `Scurvy is a hideous and frightful affliction ..':
Few discoveries are truly the consequence of a `eureka!' type discovery by one person. Most are the consequences of incremental knowledge and some coincidence of timing, event or circumstance that enables possibilities to be explored. And so it is with the cure for scurvy. Unfortunately, progress is rarely linear and solutions are often stumbled on before causation is scientifically understood.

The Surgeon (Dr James Lind), the Mariner (Captain James Cook) and the Gentleman (Sir Gilbert Blane, who was also a physician) each contributed to the cure for scurvy even though none of them seemed to understand its cause. On long voyages and during periods of war, when the ready availability of sailors could not be assured, the issue of the relative health of seamen became important.

`No matter how grand a ship was, it was useless without sailors and marines to properly sail it.'

While I knew quite a bit about Captain James Cook's enviable record for scurvy reduction on his long voyages, I had very little appreciation of the respective roles of James Lind and Gilbert Blane. This relatively slender book goes quite some way to filling in those gaps. While the absence of scurvy may well explain British superiority at sea for a large period of the `Age of Sail', and its presence may well be a contributory reason to why Britain lost the American War of Independence, I'd like to explore those aspects further.

This is a wonderful book for those interested in maritime history, medical discovery and serendipity of circumstance. I will be delving into the bibliography and the notes provided by Mr Bown to read more about scurvy. I will also be looking to read his other books.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith


Customer Review: Prof. William Wills:
This was an excellent book and should be read by every grduate and medical student. It is a profound description what was one of the problems of the medical profesion and that still exist. Thank you for leting ne review this.

W Wills

Customer Review: "Scurvy was everywhere--an ever-present arm of the Grim Reaper":
During the Age of Sail from the time of Columbus to the steam era of the mid 19th century, scurvy was the biggest killer of men at sea, being responsible for more deaths than storms, ship wrecks, combat, and all other diseases combined. It presented a slow and agonizing death to those afflicted. It caused the degeneration of connective tissues that led to wobbly teeth, the resurfacing of old wounds and injuries, and weakness and lethargy that doom the sailor to find his resting place and await his demise. Stephen Brown's book covers the effects of scurvy on the sailor as well as on history and the long process that led to the disease finally being conquered.

Scurvy is caused by a diet deficiency of Vitamin C found mainly in ascorbic fresh fruits and vegetables (lemons being high in ascorbic acid). The maddening part about the history of scurvy, as Brown explains, is how the use of fresh fruits and vegetables had been used stave off the disease various times (even back in the 1500s) but they were not adopted as an official cure. The reasons that prevented the official acknowledgment of the true cure for scurvy are many but, in part, the delays were due to a lack of controlled studies and a clinical approach to medical research, the habit of overcrowding ships with men in anticipation of replacing the dead instead of preventing the disease, disinterest in finding a cure during certain periods of time, and politics that favored certain alleged cures (i.e. wort of malt) that actually had no effect on the disease.

Brown looks at the works of surgeon James Lind, the famous Captain James Cook, and Gilbert Blane, a physician of high social-standing, to present his story on how the medical mystery of scurvy was finally solved. The author explains the importance of the disease on world events, particularly on the American Revolution and the defeat of Napoleon.

Although the book, including epilogue, is only 217 pages, it actually could have been even more condensed as Brown repeats information a lot. Just when a point seems thoroughly covered, he'll explain it again. Sometimes the story gets bogged down by conjecture, particularly when it was discussed why wort of malt continued to be recommended as a cure (pp. 167-69).

Despite the repetition, the book is informative and well-researched. It includes illustrations, an extensive bibliography, source notes, time line, index, and an appendix which lists the amount of Vitamin C found in certain foods commonly consumed during the age of sail. This appendix is a very interesting and useful addition to the book.

Customer Review: Very Interesting Treatment of a Devastating Disease:
This is a very interesting book that highlights the devastation wrought by scurvy and the path to discovering the cure. The author follows the paths of James Lind (the surgeon) who conducted a revolutionary experiment with potential treatments, Captain Cook (the mariner) who was one of the first captains to take his seaman's health seriously, and Gilbert Blane (the gentleman) who successfully advocated lime juice as prevention. Two common themes throughout the book are the significant history-altering impact of the disease and the plethora of unfounded and incorrect medical 'expertise.'

While there certainly are very interesting portions of the book, the author can be a bit repetitive and the structure of this book following the lives of the three individuals seems at times a bit forced. If you are interested in advancements in the Age of Sail, nothing beats Dava Sobel's Longitude.

Customer Review: Beating Scurvy:
I've always been fascinated by the age of sail, particularly the period during the Napoleonic Wars. An incredible test of nations and the men at sea occurred during that war. Consequently I have enjoyed reading numerous fictional accounts of that war from authors such as Patrick O'Brien, Dudley Pope, and C.S. Forester. What I never fully grasped were all the reasons why the Brits were superior to the French and Spanish navies. Those authors always talked up the better training and discipline as the reason. They also pointed to the leadership purges of the French navy that occurred during the revolution. However, I intuitively recognized that there was something more to the story. The cure for scurvy was that something more. And the Brits got there first.

Brown does a fantastic job of outlining the history of scurvy and the quest for a cure in a very interesting and readable fashion. Outlining the course of scurvy at sea during the voyages of Anson and Cook, he is able to put a cost on scurvy. He details how rigid social structures prevented remedies from being taken seriously and reluctance by the Admiralty to invest in its men in terms of hygiene and diet permitted this affliction to rage for much longer than it should have. It is shocking to read how the medical professionals of the day diagnosed patients despite the evidence. When it appears that they are on the very verge of a cure, they seem to loose touch with logic and regress to useless remedies.

Brown tells the story of scurvy very well.

Product Description:
This text examines the claims and counterclaims of scientists, manufacturers, retailers, politicians and consumers from the discovery of vitamins in the early 20th-century. It reveals the issues that have propelled the industry, and the ambivalence of Americans towards the authority of science.

Product Description:
The first modern survey of the long and fascinating history of the various ideas and theories about the cause of scurvy, the nutritional deficiency disease that has caused (with the exception of famine) the most human suffering in recorded history. Professor Carpenter documents the arguments that led to the numerous theories about the disease and eventually to the isolation and synthesis of vitamin C (ascorbic acid), and illustrates how the changing ideas about scurvy reflected the scientific and medical beliefs of different periods in history. The author also examines the modern claims for the use of very high levels of vitamin C to bring about a state of super-health, and he analyses the most important evidence for and against this practice. This fascinating story in the history of science and medicine will be of interest to both the historian and scientist as well as the general reader.



Customer Review: The bible on Scurvy:
This is the bible on scurvy and its cure. Scurvy is said to have caused more misery then all diseases and to have killed 100,000s of people at sea. This book was the first true study of the disease and the history of mans seek to cure it. During the age of sail every voyage was plagued with preventing scurvy. Most prone to scurvy were the exploration expeditions that the Europeans launched all over the world from the 1400s to the late 1800s. For 400 years, as this book supremely documents, Scurvy was THE problem with seafaring, because if the crew died it really didn't matter if you found land or not. Thus many remedies were tested and tried, some that did NOTHING and others that hit the nail on the head without realizing it. For instance it was observed that the Eskimoes, who subsisted on an all meat diet, did not have scurvy. The European sailors who were experimenting by bringing using fresh vegetables to combat the Scurvy, were suddenly dumfounded, not realizing that Vitamin C existed potently in raw meat as it did in Limes. This wonderful book weaves many amazing tales of hardship, survival, experimentation and the like. An important work and a good read.

Product Description:

Vitamin Discoveries and Disasters: History, Science, and Controversies describes the emergence of nutritional science and its contributions to our understanding of how the body functions. It is an absorbing look at the men and women, many little known in their lifetimes, whose medical detective work helped us conquer a number of devastating health conditions, including some forms of mental illness.

Each chapter of Vitamin Discoveries and Disasters focuses on a specific vitamin, describing the researchers, the research, and the historic and scientific contexts for its discovery. Together, these chapters chart the ongoing conflict between physicians who saw illness as caused by organisms and those who saw illness as a result of dietary deficiency. A concluding chapter shows how our stronger grasp of the effects of vitamin deficiencies on large populations can be used to the utmost benefit of society.

Product Description:
The health food industry is a billion-dollar business in the United States today and is thriving worldwide. However, despite the widespread consumption of these foods, little information on these products is available to validate their actual therapeutic and nutritional value. The Oxford Book of Health Foods is a comprehensive, up-to-date, and scientifically based guide to a variety of foods associated with good health. From fruits, herbs, and grains to vitamins, minerals, and dietary supplements, this new resource offers not only the claims associated with each food, but also the scientific truths behind these claims. Written in elegant and accessible prose by two leading experts in botany and nutrition, the books begins with an account of modern concepts of human nutrition, followed by a series of over one hundred entries on individual health foods and dietary supplements. Each entry for each type of food provides full information on its origins, a thorough description, the claims and myths associated with it, and the scientific evidence to support--or refute--these claims. Beautifully illustrated throughout with botanical drawings, electron micrograph scans, and photographs (all in full color), the text is further supplemented by a glossary explaining the more technical terms and a bibliography listing sources for further reading. A straightforward and authoritative reference, The Oxford Book of Health Foods is a must-have for all who are interested in general health and nutrition.



Customer Review: Seems like a good book.:
I bought this for a gift.It seems like a comprehensive book. I hope they like it.

Product Description:
In this comprehensive account of the history and treatment of beriberi, Kenneth Carpenter traces the decades of medical and chemical research that solved the puzzle posed by this mysterious disease. Caused by the lack of a minute quantity of the chemical thiamin, or vitamin B1 in the diet, beriberi is characterized by weakness and loss of feeling in the feet and legs, then swelling from fluid retention, and finally heart failure. Western doctors working in Asia after 1870 saw it as the major disease in native armed forces and prisons. It was at first attributed to miasms (poisonous vapors from damp soil) or to bacterial infections. In Java, chickens fed by chance on white rice lost the use of their legs. On brown rice, where the grain still contained its bran and germ, they remained healthy. Studies in Javanese prisons then showed beriberi also occurring where white (rather than brown) rice was the staple food. Birds were used to assay the potency of fractions extracted from rice bran and, after 20 years, highly active crystals were obtained. In another 10 years their structure was determined and "thiamin" was synthesized. Beriberi is a story of contested knowledge and erratic scientific pathways. It offers a fascinating chronicle of the development of scientific thought, a history that encompasses public health, science, diet, trade, expanding empires, war, and technology.

Product Description:
Walter Gratzer here offers a marvelous smorgasbord of stories taken from the history of nutrition, providing an engaging account of the struggle to find the ingredients of a healthy diet, and the fads and quackery that have waylaid the unwary. Gratzer recounts this history with characteristic crispness and verve. The book teems with colorful personalities, a veritable who's who of medical history, from Hippocrates to Pasteur, plus such intriguing figures such as Count Rumford, who argued that since plants got their food from water, soups would make the best meals for us. Gratzer highlights the brilliant flashes of insight as well as the sadly mistaken leaps of logic in the centuries-long effort to understand how the body uses food. We see the ingenious experiments used to reveal the workings of the stomach, the chemical analyses that uncovered the nature of proteins, carbohydrates, and vitamins, and the slow recognition that malnutrition lay behind such terrible diseases as scurvy, rickets, beriberi, and pellagra. Along the way, we read about the invention of the tin can (which originally had to be opened with a hammer and chisel), learn why ancient Egyptians had thicker skulls than Persians, and find out about today's fads and fancy diets--some dangerous, others just daft, such as the blood group diet, where you plan your meals around your blood type (people who are type 0 are supposed to eat more meat). Spiced with colorful anecdotes from the history of medicine and with sharp portraits of the scientists who advanced our understanding of diet and digestion, Terrors of the Table is a must read for anyone interested in food and health.



Customer Review: Regarding Science-Ejected Vitalism, 2007::
Vitalism is a profoundly science-ejected concept, though many CAM or 'natural health' cabals falsely claim that vitalism survives scientific scrutiny.

I quote:

"Galen taught that life derived from pneuma -- the cosmic breath [...which] entered the body in the form of air [and] underwent transformation in the brain, the heart, and the liver. The first turned it into animal spirit [...] the last into natural spirit [...] the venous blood was transformed by a 'vital spirit,' derived from the pneuma in the inspired air [p.038...for] Paracelsus [...] living matter, and in particular the organs of the body, were pervaded by vital forces, or archei, reminiscent of Galen's pneuma [p.042...] Muller [...also] was a vitalist, who believed that living organisms were governed by an elan vital, or lebenskraft, that was not derived from material, animal, or plant sources [...overall,] vitalism was the belief that reactions in the living body required the participation of a 'life force' or elan vital, on the lines of Galen's pneuma, and could never be reproduced in the laboratory. This theory should have been buried once and for all by an experiment performed in 1828 by Friedrich Wohler [p.074]."

-r.c.

Customer Review: Entertaining and appalling history of malnutrition:
This book tells a fascinating story of man's stumbling search for proper nutrition. One would think that the knowledge of a healthful diet would not be so difficult to achieve by God's most intelligent creature, but the absence good analytic methods and measurements as well as philosophical, political factors and the power of entrenched authorities, had a woeful effect.

Even when physical sciences were quite well developed, the biological sciences lagged way behind. This is probably due to the complexity of biological systems, leading to much idle speculation, opinion and authoritarian doctrine and dogma. Then when true scientific advances were achieved, quacks and charlatans quickly moved in, attracting hordes of the gullible as they continue to do today.

This book details the history of malnutrition, not just in the general sense, but the exposes the specific miseries caused by each of the many individual deficiencies to which humans are subject. The fact is that humans are not like plants and bacteria that can live on simple substances. This is provided by a varied diet. Due to economic and particularly cultural reasons specific nutrients have been lacking, giving rise to mysterious and horrible ailments. The recognition of the cause, prevention and treatment of these was not completed until the mid 20th century. Even now the optimal diet is not settled. Toxic and alleged beneficial effects of food substances are still being discovered along with new marketing and quack dietary schemes, new ones of which are promoted daily.

This book tells this story but in a rather choppy manner with sometimes boring and sometimes fascinating digressions consisting of mini-biographies of numerous pioneers in the field of nutrition and the physical sciences.

The book is marred by a surprising number of errors of fact. For instance Arthur Hassall
is erroneously said to have had bodies in the thyroid named after him. Hassall's corpuscles are actually located in the thymus. He implies that "Waterloo Teeth" were implanted in the gums when they were actually used to construct dentures. He states that many animals are subject to scurvy when it is only presenting a few such as humans, guinea pigs and monkeys. Polar bear liver toxicity is erroneously and repeatedly attributed to vitamin D rather than vitamin A. Tuna liver is erroneously called a superior source of vitamin D than cod liver oil. Who knows how many of the other eye popping facts he brings to the reader's attention are off kilter?
Still I don't know of a better book about this subject so I recommend buying it.



Customer Review: Interesting, but flawed.:
For the most part, I enjoyed this book. I enjoyed the romp through the history of biochemistry/physiology/nutrition. I learned a lot of meaningless facts to impress people with at cocktail parties.

I found the last chapters to be a little tedious. At this point the author's own opinions creep into what has previously been a pretty unbiased presentation. I think, though, that Gratzer provides the nail in his own coffin. He spends many chapters elucidating how the 'experts' are sometimes proven right, sometimes proven wrong, and sometimes quacks or downright criminals. If we didn't know everything 100 years ago, we probably don't know everything now, either, so the pronouncements of the 'experts' of 2006 should be taken with a grain of salt (and a dash of lime juice, to prevent scurvy).

Customer Review: Nutrition, Complete With Nuts:
There are some New-Age types designated "Breatharians" who claim they don't have to eat. Perhaps they just get by on the air they breathe, or on sunbeams. Breatharians are unlikely to be willing to be scientifically tested for this ability. I don't know of any analogous group that says they are also free from drinking water, or from breathing oxygen, but for the rest of us, taking in a bit of daily nutrition is a habit we cannot break. Since eating is something that has been on the mind of members of our species ever since we had minds, it is something we ought to know plenty of facts about, and we do. Facts in scientific style, however, have only come with difficulty over the past couple of centuries, and along with them have come a lot of fads and foolishness. All are topics within _Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition_ (Oxford University Press) by Walter Gratzer. The author is a biophysicist and an emeritus professor at Kings College, London, who values the way we have come to some scientific understanding of nutrition, but he also enjoys telling about human folly, and it seems that eating is so essential to us that both are on generous display in this exhaustive historical survey.

Nutritional theorizing began, like everything, with the ancient Greeks. Hippocrates stressed moderation of intake and the need for exercise. Galen took up Hippocrates's theory of the bodily humors in the second century CE, and enlarged upon it, and his unquestioned (and often unwise) teaching lasted for centuries. The eventual understanding of how vitamins are essential to health forms many chapters of this book. There is a surprising adherence to a pattern of understanding for each vitamin. Doctors would have spotted a particular disease condition, but were reluctant to accept that it was due to a nutritional deficiency, explaining it instead as an infection or an intake of toxins. Different experts at diverse times would come to some understanding about what foods would clear up the problem, but the inertial resistance to change would condemn sufferers to illness for years, while authorities in the rearguard criticized (sometimes with acid vituperation) what turned out to be healthful suggestions. We groped our way toward a nutritional understanding of what was good for us, but there has never been any lack of self-appointed experts to tell us. For some reason, the United States has been the region from which the most durable food fads have sprung, with famous names like Graham, Kellogg, and Post all implicated in the silliness. The most amusing crackpot was Horace Fletcher who at the turn of the 20th century proposed that all ills could be banished by chewing food thoroughly. Just chew every bite 32 times (one for each tooth), ordered the Great Masticator, a man who had an imposing stage presence and was an accomplished liar about his qualifications. Chewing parties became a fashion among some diners, with a conductor who counted and timed the bites and authorized the swallows.

Gratzer finishes this amusing and scary survey with a chapter on current nutritional trends. It might be titled "If you're so smart, why ain't you healthy?" We know plenty about nutrition by now, we know what levels of fat, carbohydrate, proteins, minerals, and vitamins anyone ought to take in, and still we are eating badly. He reviews the questionable and complicated data that have to do with, for instance, fiber and salt intake, and finds that public understanding of such issues (fiber good, salt bad) may have little correlation with actual health results. Worry over cholesterol levels has produced millions of dollars worth of benefit for pharmaceutical companies, but beneficial effects on general health have been far harder to find. There are common additives now of which no one really knows the long-term effects, but nothing quite as yucky as the adulterants used in the past, like the snails put into watered milk to make it frothy. We eat badly, we are gaining weight, and diabetes rates are going up. Gratzer's advice: diets full of synthetic and processed foods promote hypertension and obesity. Fresh fruit and vegetables are good for you. And always: "That it is prudent to avoid excess of any type of food seems now to be the clearest message." It's been a couple of thousand years with lots of scientific experiments and papers, but Hippocrates would have agreed.

Product Description:
Animals, Vegetables And Minerals - From A To Z links an animal and a nutritional concept in the form of a four line verse to each letter of the alphabet. The humorous alliterative verses enhanced by the colorful witty illustrations make learning about a healthy life style fun for kids and delightful for parents to read to them. In view of the national concern about childhood obesity this book is not only educational but particularly timely.



Customer Review: animals, vegetables and minerals a to z:
I liked the animals and what they did. my daddy read me the story and it was fun. I specially liked the long dog he looks like my dog he doesn't wear hats

Customer Review: Sallie did herself proud.:
This little book is a delightful Ogden Nash - Aesop romp through our alphabet; the children will love the wonderful illustrations. Well done - just in time for Christmas.

Tom Scott, M.D. Orlando, Florida.

Customer Review: A chuckle in every line:
Sallie O'Donnell's delightful book deserves a worldwide audience. Chuckles will echo from continent to continent as adults and children savour the amusing rhymes - then slowly absorb the good advice contained in them. Sallie is a standard-bearer in the fight against the 21st Century's greatest scourge: obesity.

Peter Hinchliffe, Yorkshire, England.

Customer Review: My little brother loved it.:
I read all sorts of books to my brother. Grandma bought this one for him. He loves the colors and the poetry and always brings it to me so that I can read it to him. He's only 19 months old. Casey Hoffman

Customer Review: ANIMALS, VEGETABLES AND MINERALS:
THIS IS THE BOOK I WAS LOOKING FOR. A EASY AND ENJOYABLE WAY TO INTRODUCE MY CHILDREN TO FOOD AND WHAT FOOD REALLY IS. THE KIDS TOOK IT ALL IN WITH A REAL POSITIVE ATTITUDE. BELIEVE ME THIS HAS MADE CHRISTMAS GIFTS EASY. ALL MY BROTHER'S AND SISTER'S KIDS ARE GOING TO GET THIS. MS. O'DONNELL HAS A RARE GIFT AND I HOPE SHE TURNS OUT MANY MORE SIMILAR BOOKS.