The virtues of oranges and lemons: Essential Nutrients

In 3800 BCE, a skeleton of an infant with abnormal bone formation found in Egypt suggests that scurvy existed there at that time. By 1550 BCE, scurvy was first described in the Ebers Papyrus of Egypt. In 1500 CE, sailors in the fleet of Portuguese explorer Pedro Cabral were given oranges and lemons, curing some of them of scurvy. By 1614, English military surgeon John Woodall noted that eating citrus fruits could cure scurvy. In 1912, Polish biochemist Casimir Funk identified four vital “vitamines” in food that could prevent certain diseases, and by 1928, Hungarian biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi had isolated ascorbic acid, known as vitamin C.

Regular consumption of citrus fruits soon began to alleviate scurvy symptoms in affected sailors. Other assumed remedies, such as vinegar, were ineffective. The body requires a substance found in citrus fruits to perform vital functions—without it, scurvy develops.