Vitamin C is a water-soluble nutrient essential for life and used by the human body
for many purposes. To the best of scientific knowledge, all animals and plants
synthesize their own vitamin C, except for a small number of animals, including
guinea pigs, humans, apes, the red vented bulbil, a fruit eating bat and a species of
trout, that cannot. This fact, and the related fact that man possesses three of the
four enzymes that animals employ to manufacture the substance in relatively large
amounts, has lead researchers such as Irwin Stone and Linus Pauling to hypopthesize
that man once manufactured this substance in his body millions of years ago in
quantities roughly estimated at 3,000-4,000 mg daily, but later lost the ability to
do this through evolution. If true, this would of course mean that vitamin C was
misnamed as a vitamin and is in fact a macronutrient, like fat or
carbohydrate.
Vitamin C was first isolated in 1928, and in 1932 it was proved to be the agent which
prevents scurvy. Szent-Gyorgyi was awarded the Nobel prize for this feat.
Vitamin C is the L-enantiomer of ascorbic acid (in one of its well known forms). The
defining part of the substance is the ascorbate ion, which can be associated either
with acids or bases. Commercial vitamin C is often a mix of ascorbic acid, sodium
ascorbate and/or other ascorbates.
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