vitamin C (ascorbic acid) scurvy and cardiovascular system beriberi and pellagra niacin and vitamin C (ascorbic acid) scurvy and cardiovascular system beriberi and pellagra niacin and alcoholics (alcoholism) anemia in pellagra and alcoholics (alcoholism) anemia in thiamine deficiency in goiter iodine deficiency in clinical manifestations of selenium deficiency in protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) bone(s) vitamin C and protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) bone(s) vitamin C and The beta-carotene discovery of discovery iodine deficiency of iodine deficiency of of the chief nutrients has been essentially a twentieth-century phenomenon. In 1897, Dutch researcher Eijkman, Christian Christian Eijkman, while investigating beriberi in the Dutch East Indies, showed that a diet of polished rice caused the disease and that the addition of the rice polishings to the diet cured it. Fifteen years later, Polish chemist Funk, Casimir Casimir Funk proposed that not only beriberi but scurvy, pellagra, and rickets were caused by an absence of a dietary substance he called vitamine; and the age of vitamins was under way. This is not to say that much earlier research did not undergird such twentieth-century breakthroughs. The importance to human health of some minerals, such as iron, had long been at least vaguely recognized, and by 1800, it was understood that blood contained iron; since the eighteenth century, some kind of dietary deficiency had been a periodic suspect as the cause of scurvy; and protein was discovered in the nineteenth century. But in addition to both water- and fat-soluble vitamins, the importance and functions of most of the major minerals and the trace minerals, along with amino acids, were all twentieth-century discoveries, as were the essential fatty acids and the nutritional illness now called protein–energy malnutrition (PEM). One important consequence of the new knowledge was the near-total eradication of the major deficiency diseases. Pellagra, which had ravaged southern Europe and the southern United States, was found to be associated with niacin deficiency; beriberi, the scourge of rice-consuming peoples in the Far East, was linked with thiamine deficiency; and scurvy was finally – and definitively – shown to be the result of vitamin C deficiency. But as rapidly as these illnesses were conquered, new conditions were identified. There was PEM (mostly in the developing world) and anorexia nervosa (mostly in the developed world). iodine deficiency of goiter from Goiter, the result of iodine deficiency, proved to be a problem in both, and Keshan disease was associated with selenium deficiency and the death of children in China. In addition, faulty nutrition has been implicated in the chronic diseases that are especially prominent in the countries of the West, such as diabetes, heartrelated ailments, and cancer. Much of the problem seems to lie in diets significantly higher in sugar, salt, and fats than those of most other peoples – diets diet(s)., e.g., Rastafarian diet of affluence specific types of affluence, which among other things produce obesity that can predispose to heart diseases and diabetes. Yet the link between diet and diseases of a chronic nature has often been sufficiently vague as to result, thus far, in more questions than answers. Consequently, many sensible hypotheses abound, and we have included one of these. Our last chapter in Part IV connects a specific nutriment, milk, and lactose tolerance – an ability to absorb milk after childhood, not shared by most of the world’s population – with the high rates of coronary artery disease among the people of northern Europe and those descended from northern Europeans in the United States.