Vitamin C the word for today and a popular subject of discussion eveerywhere. Of ciurse we have to start with the word vitamin. Biochemists gradually tealized that some disdases weren't caused by germs of microorganisms but were causaed because there was something missing in the diet. They found that if you didn't include certain foods in the dier,you would get diseases like scurvy or beri-beri, and if you included the fioda, the diease would disappear.