History of Vitamins - Term Paper Example

form cities and spared the nomadic lifestyle in which they served as hunter gatherers, they started to grow crops and increase their knowledge of agriculture. The ancient Sumeria scribes soon noticed that one’s health is greatly affected by the food one consumes. The shaman priests of the preceding tribes were primarily aware of this fact already when the scribes of Sumeria began to unravel the nutritious secrets of food. However, the nutritious value of food was not studied in quite detail until the city states of Babylon and Mesopotamia took their turn.

These states studied food and recorded the nutritious value of individual food components upon tablets made of clay. It is quite unfortunate that most of these early clay tablets have either not managed to survive over the course of centuries or else, have been covered up by tons of sands in the desert areas. People of the ancient Egypt new some foods that could be consumed with the intention of improving one’s vision in the night. Thus, it can be said that the history of vitamins had born long ago, but the original insights could not be maintained or improved over the centuries.

Practical advances in the field of medicine and nutrition were made by the ancient Romans, Greeks as well as Arabs, but their knowledge to prevent the diseases from occurring was limited. They had placed their main emphasis upon the curing process only after the illness’s symptoms would begin to show up. The work of early herbalists was often looked at with immense suspicion and the preventive potions suggested by them were largely refuted by the public in general. Ancient people would think of the early herbalists as witches and wizards.

People of Europe adopted an even more outrageous approach towards the herbalists because of the fact that the Church was in general not supportive of the discussion of science and would primarily think of it as extremely precarious blasphemy. Therefore, millions of people in need of vitamins of