- Person
- Casimir Funk
- Lived
- 1884–1967
- Field
- Biochemistry
- From
- Polish-American
The story
By the 1930s scientists understood that a severe lack of a vitamin could cause scurvy, rickets, beriberi or pellagra. Casimir Funk, the Warsaw-born Jewish biochemist who had coined the word “vitamine” in 1912, had helped establish that idea. By the mid-1930s he was working in Paris, where he had founded a private laboratory, Casa Biochemica, and served as a biochemist for the Roussel company.
In 1936 he published Vitamin and Mineral Therapy, translated into English by his longtime collaborator H. E. Dubin. In it he described vitamin deficiencies as insidious, because they can develop without warning and cause lasting damage. He agreed that the lack of a particular vitamin eventually leads to a particular nutritional disease. But he argued that long before such a disease becomes apparent, a shortage of one or more vitamins usually causes tissue changes that lower the general resistance of the body and make it more susceptible to certain infections.
It was a forward-looking view of nutrition. Funk was arguing that adequate vitamins matter for everyone's everyday health and resistance to illness, not only for people already suffering from a named deficiency disease. The same year he determined the molecular structure of thiamine, vitamin B1, the substance whose absence causes beriberi.
Funk was also careful not to overstate the case. He stressed that only small amounts of vitamins are needed to maintain health, a point many people ignored during the vitamin craze that followed, when manufacturers promoted large doses even though too much of some vitamins, such as A and D, can be harmful.
After Germany invaded Poland in 1939 he returned to New York and resumed work with the U.S. Vitamin Corporation, which owned the copyright to Vitamin and Mineral Therapy. He went on to head the Funk Foundation for Medical Research, supported by the company, and retired from active research in 1963. His contributions helped improve child and adult nutrition and encouraged the addition of proper nutrients to manufactured foods.
Why it matters
Funk's warning helped shift nutrition toward prevention, encouraging attention to adequate vitamins for everyone rather than only treating severe disease.
About Casimir Funk
Warsaw-born biochemist of Jewish descent who coined the word ‘vitamine’ in 1912 and argued that beriberi, scurvy, pellagra and rickets were deficiency diseases.
More about Casimir Funk
- Casimir Funk discovered the idea of vitaminsIn 1912 the Warsaw-born biochemist Casimir Funk coined the word "vitamine" and proposed that missing nutrients cause diseases such as beriberi, scurvy, pellagra and rickets.
- Casimir Funk's book Die Vitamine launched a research boomCasimir Funk's 1914 book Die Vitamine drew scientists into the new field, and within 35 years of his work all 13 known vitamins had been discovered.
- Casimir Funk linked pellagra to how corn was milledCasimir Funk was an early investigator of pellagra and suggested that a change in how corn was milled lay behind outbreaks, an idea largely ignored at the time.
- Casimir Funk improved insulin production in WarsawIn 1923, with Rockefeller Foundation support, Casimir Funk returned to Poland to head biochemistry at the State Institute of Hygiene, where he improved the quality of insulin it produced.
- Casimir Funk made the first AMA-accepted vitamin productAfter moving to the United States, Casimir Funk developed Oscodal, a vitamin A and D concentrate that was the first vitamin preparation accepted by the American Medical Association.
Sources
- Casimir Funk Encyclopedia.com
- Casimir Funk Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.