Scurvy natural vitamin C content of the milk. Scurvy is one of the accompanying diseases of malnutrition (other such micronutrient deficiencies are beriberi or pellagra) and thus is still widespread in areas of the world depending on external food aid. Although rare, there are also documented cases of scurvy due to poor dietary choices by people living in industrialized nations. Vitamins are essential to the production and use of enzymes that are involved in ongoing processes throughout the human body. Ascorbic acid is needed for a variety of biosynthetic pathways, by accelerating hydroxylation and amidation reactions. In the synthesis of collagen,
Vitamin C had proven this, but published the result without giving Szent-Györgyi credit for it. This led to a bitter dispute over priority. In 1933, Walter Norman Haworth chemically identified the vitamin as -hexuronic acid, proving this by synthesis in 1933. Haworth and Szent-Györgyi proposed that L-hexuronic acid be named a-scorbic acid, and chemically -ascorbic acid, in honor of its activity against scurvy. The term's etymology is from Latin, "a-" meaning away, or off from, while -scorbic is from Medieval Latin "scorbuticus" (pertaining to scurvy), cognate with Old Norse "skyrbjugr", French "scorbut", Dutch "scheurbuik" and Low German "scharbock". Partly for this discovery,