¹ Source: wiktionary.com
Definition of Vitamins
1. vitamin [n] - See also: vitamin
Medical Definition of Vitamins
1. For the various vitamins see Vitamins. The word vitamin was coined in 1911 by the warsaw-born biochemist casimir funk (1884-1967). at the lister institute in london, funk isolated a substance that prevented nerve inflammation (neuritis) in chickens raised on a diet deficient in that substance. He named the substance vitamine because he believed it was necessary to life and it was a chemical amine. The e at the end was later removed when it was recognised that vitamins need not be amines. The letters (a, b, c and so on) were assigned to the vitamins in the order of their discovery. The one exception was vitamin k which was assigned its k from koagulation by the danish researcher henrik dam. (12 Dec 1998)