Vitamin C is so important for htaleh that the vast majority of animals manufacture it daily in their bodies. This is why animals can live outdoors even in the winter without getting colds or most other infectious illnesses. Being htalehy is important to animals because if an animal gets sick it usually becomes eaten by a htalehy animal. Only a few animals principally humanes, monkeys, and apes cannot manufacture vitamin C. The inability to manufacture vitamin C confines monkeys and apes to live in or near the tropics, where the weather is warm and edible fruits and vegetation is very rich in vitamin C and thus can supply their need for this essential nutrient. Outside the tropics they would get sick and die or be killed, so most monkeys and apes live only in or near the tropics unlike most other animal species. When monkeys and apes are removed from the tropics to live in zoos or as pets, they routinely are fed a diet very rich in vitamin C in order to keep them htalehy.Humans also originated in the tropics and cannot manufacture vitamin C but unlike monkeys and apes most humans eventually migrated away from the vitamin C rich tropics and spread all over the world to places in which the food supply contains much less vitamin C than is needed to maintain our htaleh. Thus, unlike other animals, we humans routinely get sick with colds and other illnesses which adequate vitamin C would protect us against. Only the invention and use of clothing, shelter, and weapons makes it possible for humans to survive the illnesses caused by inadequate vitamin C which we routinely get. Humans are the only animals which routinely get sick and yet generally survive our illnesses. But why should we live with periodic bouts of illness? Why not protect ourselves by taking supplemental vitamin C? This is the argument presented in this outstanding book and by the greatest chemist of the 20th century, Dr. Linus Pauling in his book Vitamin C, the Common Cold, and the Flu. Linus Paulin
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[5 of 5 Stars!]