The chemical compounds necessary for human life that we call vitamins have a very interesting past. Half of what we know was found through rigorous research; half simply by researching something else entirely. In this article, we�ll discuss some of the key periods of time in which our knowledge of vitamins grew.

-Early scientists discovered that certain foods could cure diseases which were caused by vitamin deficiencies. Ancient Egyptians cured night blindness (a symptom of a Vitamin A deficiency) by feeding those afflicted some liver. In the 1700s, scurvy (a symptom of a Vitamin C deficiency) was treated by a prescription of citrus fruits, which are some of the most Vitamin-C rich food on the planet.

-In the year of 1906, a scientist known as Fredric Gowland Hopkins isolated certain types of food that he deemed necessary for proper human health. The term vitamin was coined as a combination of vita, denoting life, and amine, which was a compound thought to be common in all vitamins. This compound was mistakenly thought of as common to all vitamins because scientist Cashmir Funk believed that all vitamins featured a nitrogen containing entity. This was later shown to be false, due to the fact that Vitamin C was not found to actually have any amines, so the last �e� was dropped, taking away the amine connotation and leaving us with the word vitamin.

-The next big breakthrough for the world of vitamins occurred in 1913, when scientists Thomas Osborne and Lafayette Mendel were researching at Yale. They discovered that butter contained a certain fat soluble compound that we would come to know as Vitamin A. Vitamin B was isolated soon afterwards in 1916 by Elmer V. McCollum.

-Many of the vitamins were discovered in the early 1900s by scientists depriving animals of them. For instance, Vitamin D was discovered by a scientist who was trying to understand the disease rickets, which is a side-effect of a Vitamin D deficiency.

-Vitamin C became the first vitamin to be artificially synthesized in the year 1935.

- There are thirteen vitamins in all that we have discovered, with four of them (Vitamins A, D, E and K) being fat soluble and 9 of them (all of the B Vitamins and Vitamin C) being water soluble. The body stores up fat soluble vitamins while flushing out excess water soluble vitamins. For that reason, it�s important to not have too much of Vitamin A, D, E, or K.

-The vitamins take the odd leap between Vitamin E and Vitamin K due to the fact that a number of vitamins have been reclassified due to the fact that they bore a relation to another vitamin. For instance, there was once a Vitamin G. This substance, with the scientific name Riboflavin, has been renamed as Vitamin B2 due to its relation in the B-Complex. Vitamin F consisted of fatty acids, which were later reclassified due to the fact that, while essential to the body, they did not sufficiently fit the guidelines for which we classify vitamins.