Epidemiology is the study of the occurrence of human diseases. Nutritional epidemiology focuses on the relationship between our diet and our health. The field is often dated to 1753, when Lind observed that fresh fruits and vegetables could cure scurvy and conducted one of the earliest clinical trials with lemons and oranges, which, he noted, had "most sudden and good effects" in treating the disease. Much later, it was found that vitamin C deficiency was the cause.
Other milestones in nutritional epidemiology include:
Kanehiro Takaki in 1884 links Japanese sailors' diet of polished rice to the disease beriberi. He adds milk and vegetables to their diet and eliminates the disease. Much later, in 1933, Robert R. Williams synthesizes and names the key nutrient, (vitamin B1), completing research begun by Japanese J. Suzuki and colleagues in 1912.
Polish-American scientist Casimir Funk suggests in 1912 that dietary deficiencies in substances that he names "vitamins" may cause beriberi, rickets, pellagra, sprue and other diseases.
Dr.Joseph Goldberger's tracing of pellagra among poor, corn-dependent people in the Southern states to a dietary deficiency in 1915. The missing vitamin component, niacin (vitamin B3) is not indentified until 1938, however, by Conrad Elvehjem---JW.
. . . Fall 1996
