What is a vitamin? I don't mean the different types of vitamins or the shops where they can be bought. I mean, what makes something a vitamin? Perhaps a vitamin is only a useless chemical that serves no purpose, and is therefore called a vitamin to make it seem useful when it really isn't. I prefer to think of a vitamin, however, as an essential chemical that our body needs to grow and survive. Unfortunately, the former definition is sometimes the more accurate one; in fact, some of the vitamins being sold today do nothing good for the human body. One example of this is vitamin B 17 . Laetrile was named a vitamin in the 1900's when Ernst T. Krebs, Jr. wanted to get around the restrictions on drugs by selling laetrile as a nutritional supplement. Some say that Krebs was a medical doctor, but he never even got a doctoral degree, except for an honorary degree from a school not accredited to award advanced degrees. In reality, Krebs was just a chemist that wanted to make money.