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You don’t hear much about the disease beriberi anymore. Part of the reason is that breakfast cereals include a mysterious ingredient called thiamine.
您應(yīng)該極少聽說一種叫做腳氣病（beriberi）的頑疾吧。可為何如今患有這種病的人已經(jīng)不多了呢？其部分原因在于，現(xiàn)代人早餐中的谷類食品含有一種名為硫胺（thiamine）的神秘成分。
Thiamine is the vitamin that started it all.
作為vitamin家族的一個成員，硫胺揭開了整個家族的故事。
Beriberi is an illness that attacks the nervous system and makes people weak and listless. Beriberi literally means “weakness weakness.”
腳氣病（beriberi）是一種使人神經(jīng)系統(tǒng)受損的疾病，其癥狀為虛弱、倦怠。而單詞beriberi在字面上就有“虛弱（weakness）” 的意思。
During the late 1800s the Japanese navy was having a problem with beriberi among its sailors. They cracked the problem when they made the sailors eat brown rice instead of white rice. There was something in that brown rice that seemed to save the day.
在十九世紀末期，日本海軍中的水兵就頗受腳氣病的困擾。直到水手們將主糧由普通大米改為糙米，這個問題才得到解決。看來，多虧了糙米中的某種物質(zhì)，日本海軍才轉(zhuǎn)危為安。
A Polish biochemist named Casimir Funk isolated what was in the brown stuff. It turned out to be thiamine.
一位名叫卡西米爾•馮克（Casimir Funk）的波蘭生化學(xué)家，從糙米中分離出了一種被后人命名為硫胺（thiamine）的物質(zhì)。
As its name implies, thiamine is part of a group of chemicals known as amines. Casimir Funk was rightly excited at the isolation of this life-giving chemical and he joined a chorus of other nutritional scientists predicting that with more research other chemicals could be uncovered and found to be essential to our health. There were likely a bunch of diseases that could be prevented if only we could find out the little bit of stuff we needed to eat that would prevent them.
正如它名稱所顯示的那樣，硫胺屬于一種叫做胺（amines）的化學(xué)物質(zhì)。在分離出的這種對生命至關(guān)重要的化學(xué)物質(zhì)之后，卡西米爾•馮克十分激動。而隨后，他也加入到一群營養(yǎng)學(xué)家的行列——這些學(xué)者預(yù)測，憑借更多更深入的研究，其他對人類健康起到舉足輕重作用的化學(xué)物質(zhì)也終將被發(fā)現(xiàn)。只要我們找到了針對某一些疾病起作用的化學(xué)物質(zhì)，并按需微量攝入它們，我們就可以預(yù)防這些疾病。
In 1912 he coined a new term for these various little bits of stuff: vitamines.
馮克于1912年為這些微量元素造出了一個新名詞：vitamines。
He made up the word based on the Latin vita meaning “life” and amine the class of chemicals that thiamine belonged to.
基于意為“生命”的拉丁語單詞vita以及硫胺所屬的那類化學(xué)物質(zhì)amine（胺），馮克造出了這個新單詞。
Casimir Funk was right about there being all kinds of illness that we could prevent with the right vitamins but he was wrong in supposing that just because thiamine was an amine, all the other vitamins were likely to be amines too.
卡西米爾•馮克是對的：只要服用正確的vitamins，我們可以預(yù)防很多疾病。不過，他的判斷——僅僅由于硫胺是胺的一種，所以其他所有的維生素似乎都是胺——卻并不正確。
And so it was that the word was punished by the removal of its “e” so that people wouldn’t ever be fooled again into thinking that a vitamin needed to be an amine.
因此，他創(chuàng)造出的這個單詞受到了懲罰，其末尾的“e”被刪除。這樣一來，人們應(yīng)該不會再犯傻，認為vitamin必須是一種胺。
Although thiamine was the first vitamin to be called a vitamin it is also known to us as Vitamin B1. You’d think that the first vitamin might be called Vitamin A1 wouldn’t you.
盡管硫胺是第一種被稱為vitamin的維生素，它卻被人們叫做Vitamin B1。您大概會想，第一種維生素大概會被叫做Vitamin A1，對吧？
Well the reason it’s B1 that as people discovered more of these things that seemed to be so good for us, they began to notice that some of them were soluble in water and others were soluble in fats. A scientist named Elmer McCollum called the fat soluble vitamins A, and the water soluble vitamins B.
其實，它之所以被命名為B1，其原因在于維生素的溶解特性：在發(fā)現(xiàn)了更多此類對健康有益的元素之后，科學(xué)家們注意到，其中一些元素溶于水，而另一些則溶于油脂。于是，一位名為埃爾默•麥考倫（Elmer McCollum）的科學(xué)家便把脂溶性維生素叫做vitamins A，水溶性維生素叫做vitamins B。
The event that caused a C vitamin to be named was the same event that resulted in the word vitamin being punished with the loss of its “e”.
值得注意的是，那件導(dǎo)致單詞vitamin受到懲罰，并最終失去字母“e”的事件，也讓某一種微量元素得到了維生素C的名稱。
A and B were amines, here’s another one that prevents scurvy but it isn’t an amine, better call it C.
A類和B類維生素曾被認為是不同種類的胺。然而，另一種被用來預(yù)防敗血癥（scurvy）的維生素卻根本不是胺，將它稱為維生素C會更合適一些。
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