1.The first vitamin to be isolated and then synthesised in 1936 was thiamine or B1. Deficiency causes beriberi, a disease that can affect both the cardiovascular and the central nervous systems.
2.He had survived pellagra in Persia, scurvy in the Malayan archipelago, leprosy in Alexandria, beriberi in Japan, bubonic plague in Madagascar, an earthquake in Sicily, and a disastrous shipwreck in the Strait of Magellan.