With the Medline database so readily available, researchers today often think they have few reasons to read the medical literature published before 1966. Yet in reading old medical and nutrition texts, I am frequently amazed by the astute observations of those who came before us.

In 1996, blessed by serendipity and an abundance of used book stores in Portland, Oregon, I came across a copy of On Oxidation, Fermentation, Vitamins, Health and Disease, a thin volume containing five lectures given by Albert V. Szent-Gyorgyi, M.D., Ph.D., in March and April of 1939 u Vanderbilt University. I had found a treasure almost lost to the past.

Szent-Gyorgyi, who discovered vitamn C and the flavonoids, and who was awarded the Nobel prize for medicine in 1937, was a reluctant "vitaminologist." He felt that research in the field was too easy a way to win accolades and sought greater challenges.

Reluctant as he might have been, Szent-Gyorgyi quickly began to see vitamin requirements in terms different from those of his peers. At that time, most researchers saw vitamins as substances required in miniscule amounts to prevent deficiency diseases, such as scurvy.