Von Seefahrern,Meerschweinchen und Citrusfrüchten. Der lange Kampf gegen Skorbut

Although scurvy has been around since the beginning of mankind, it was not until the 16th century that it was recognized as a disease. It took hundreds of years and a long sequence of small advances and missed opportunities to discover its cause. Finally at the beginning of the 20th century and with the help of guinea pigs for testing the experiments, scurvy was identified as a form of malnutrition. This started an exciting race for the isolation, structure determination, and synthesis of vitamin C. As a result, modern industrial synthesis now allows an affordable Vitamin C supply for everyone. This success story due to modern chemistry has made scurvy one of the many diseases that have almost entirely disappeared from our lives.