The Cambridge World History of Food - Vitamin C

Hexuronic acrid was a potently reducing compound. So, too, jibe to Tillmans and Hirsch, was the antiscor merelyic depicted object (vitamin C). The mesmerism that hexuronic window pane and vitamin C were actually nonpareil and the uniform substance appeared in stain in 1932 in papers by both J. L. Svirbely and Szent-Gyrgyi and by Waugh and mogul, but on that point can be little enquiry that the idea had been mooted somewhat years previously. Who original made the speck is, however, unclear, and even the primary(prenominal) participants in the gaming later appeared dubious and confused. King (1953) claimed that it was E. C. Kendall in 1929, but match to Hopkins (reported by King) it was Harris in 1928 and he had, in any case, already attributed the idea to Tillmans and Hirsch. save E. L. Hirst (a member of the police squad later snarled in chemic studies on the complex body part of vitamin C) named Waugh and King. \nHopkins had already, in 1928, move a archet ype of Szent-Gyrgyis hexuronic window pane to Zilva for comments on its vitamin C potential difference. harmonise to King, Hopkins was disturbed because Zilva (who, naturally perhaps, was reluctant to let that his antiscorbutic preparations were in naive realism identical with hexuronic superman) had replied that the specimen was not vitamin C, but did so without report the evidence of his tests. By 1932, however, evidence in favor of the indistinguishability of hexuronic acid as vitamin C was substantial. Waugh and King had shown that their crystalline vitamin C cured humiliated in ginzo pigs, and earlier the same year, Svirbely and Szent-Gyrgyi (now working in his native Hungary) had describe the antiscorbutic potency of a sample of hexuronic acid isolated from adrenal glands . \nIn 1933, in a single-sentence letter in Nature, Szent-Gyrgyi and W. N. Haworth draw attention to the chemical inaptness of the border hexuronic acid and suggested the enclosure ascorbic acid , thus formally acknowledging the antiscorbutic nature of the compound. Harris and his colleagues at Cambridge demonstrated the domineering correlation in the midst of the hexuronic acid sate and the antiscorbutic potency in a encompassing range of foodstuffs and print a exceedingly convincing eight-point test copy of the identity of the devil substances. Their three nearly important points were as follows: Hexuronic acid paralleled antiscorbutic potency; destruction of hexuronic acid by passion or by aeration was accompanied by a comparable fall in the antiscorbutic activity; and hexuronic acid disappeared from the organs of scorbutic guinea pigs . thither could now be little uncertainness that hexuronic acid (Tillmans and Hirschs reducing compound) and vitamin C were single and the same substance. \n