Antiscorbutic Factor

The antiscorbutic factor of fresh fruits, which prevents the development of the typical symptoms of scurvy in humans, is a carbohydrate derivative known as vitamin C or ascorbic acid. This substance is not a carboxylic acid, but a lactone, and owes its acidic properties (and ease of oxidation) to the presence of an enediol grouping. It belongs to the l series by the glyceraldehyde convention ... 

Ascorbic acid was isolated from cabbage, lemon juice, and adrenal glands by Szent-Gyorgy in 1928, and identified as the antiscorbutic factor by Waugh and King in 1932. Its structure was established by Haworth and coworkers in 1933, and the same year Haworth, in Birmingham, and Reichstein, in Switzerland, succeeded in synthesizing the vitamin. 

The availability of a reliable biological method of assaying the antiscorbutic factor, although slow, was crucial in the eventual isolation of the vitamin. By 1919, McCollum had named two factors required in their diet for the survival of rats, A and B . Drummond, in that year suggested that the antfscorbutic factor be called water soluble C . However, the term vitamin for such essential factors was becoming widely adopted and the antiscorbutic factor became known as vitamin C. 

The history of scurvy and vitamin C are summarized in an annotated volume (Carpenter, 1986). t An account of the efforts to isolate the antiscorbutic factor and the controversy over the credit for its discovery is provided in the Journal of Nutrition (Jukes, 1988). 

The consequence of a deficiency of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is scurvy. The earliest account of scurvy was perhaps written by the Egyptians in the Papyrus Elbers about 1550 B.c. For centuries, scurvy was a scourge of navies, armies, and explorers. The first appearance of the term scurvy in an English publication was in 1589 in the records of Richard Hakluyt. Another 344 years passed before the antiscorbutic factor (vitamin C) was isolated, characterized, and synthesized. In 1933, Haworth and Szent-Gyorgyi coined the name L-ascorbic acid to reflect the antiscorbutic properties of the vitamin. 

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