Focusing on the commercialization of vitamins from the 1920s to the 1980s, this study will explore the critical intersection of medicine, business and society. The creation, promotion and expansion of the vitamin market by the pharmaceutical industry, the involvement of university researchers in the development of vitamin products, the conflicts over the definition of vitamins, and the public debates over the efficacy of vitamin therapies will be used to demonstrate the shifting levels of the public's understanding of medical science. Moreover, this investigation of the popularization of biomedical knowledge and of the dynamic relationship among medical experts, business entrepreneurs and consumers will disclose the manner in which medical science was promoted and manipulated by researchers, educators, advertisers, pharmaceutists and the pharmaceutical industry. Thus, this history of the commercial development of vitamins, an examination of the difficulty of presenting in a meaningful way complex medical theories and ambiguous research results to a public untrained in the intricacies of scientific research yet willing to accept claims couched in scientific rhetoric, provides an ideal vantage point for studying the interaction of medicine and American culture.
