Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid)
2010
Acrylic on canvas
11” x 14”
$300 Sold!
We’re almost alone in our inability to make our own vitamin C. Humans and other higher primates join guinea pigs and a few bats and birds, as the only animals that need to eat a certain amount of ascorbic acid daily to maintain good health. In nature, primates consume an enormous amount of fruit, rich in vitamin C, so it’s understandable that we might not need to manufacture our own. When humans left the trees however, and started living in deserts, on ships, and in the arctic, vitamin C became a problem.
Vitamin C is required in large quantities relative to other vitamins, and is chemically unstable, so it’s likely that any population deprived of fresh fruits and vegetables for an extended period will develop scurvy. Since vitamin C is especially important for maintaining and rebuilding collagen, the parts of the body that rely on collagen fail first. Gums bleed, skin tears and discolors, and teeth fall out. But since vitamin C is required by all parts of the body, scurvy soon becomes general — ending, of course, in madness and death. Vitamin C is so deeply ingrained in the health of all animals and plants, being one of the most important cellular anti-oxidants, that without it, we simply fall apart.
Perhaps because few diseases so obviously resemble a complete absence of health as scurvy, vitamin C occupies a pedestal in the world of quack medicine. Whatever ails you, somebody thinks vitamin C will cure it. And because vitamin C is so non-toxic (it causes diarrhea, but that’s nothing to worry about), the recommended doses spiral up and up, in an insane bidding war: The US government recommends 90 mg per day, so the Linus Pauling Institute recommends 400. Patrick Holford recommends 4,000, while Dr. Pauling himself took 18,000. The Vitamin C Foundation says to take 30,000 mg daily to treat cancer, and they report that the Cathcart/Levy regimen for infectious disease involves a staggering 300,000 mg of vitamin C per day.
Quackery has come a long way. It may be the case that even now, some unfortunate soul is choking down 10 solid ounces of pure vitamin C.
These molecules are rendered as space-filling models, in a natural, low-energy conformation, and displayed from an angle that shows off as much of their structure as possible. The atoms are color-coded, with carbon being black, hydrogen white, and oxygen red. They are painted in artist-quality acrylics, on gessoed canvas
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