Jerome

=== Historical and hagiographic writings ===
==== Description of vitamin A deficiency ====
The following passage, taken from Jerome's ''Life of St. Hilarion'' which was written {{Circa|392|lk=no}}, appears to be the earliest account of the [[etiology]], symptoms and cure of severe [[vitamin A deficiency]]:<ref name="Vitamin" />
{{blockquote|From his thirty-first to his thirty-fifth year he had for food six ounces of [[barley bread]], and vegetables slightly cooked without oil. But finding that his eyes were growing dim, and that his whole body was shrivelled with an eruption and a sort of stony roughness (''impetigine et pumicea quad scabredine'') he added oil to his former food, and up to the sixty-third year of his life followed this temperate course, tasting neither fruit nor pulse, nor anything whatsoever besides.<ref name="Vitamin">{{cite journal |author=Taylor, F. Sherwood |author-link=F. Sherwood Taylor |title=St. Jerome and Vitamin A |journal=Nature |volume=154 |pages=802 |date=23 December 1944 |issue=3921 |doi=10.1038/154802a0|bibcode=1944Natur.154Q.802T |s2cid=4097517 |doi-access=free }}</ref>|author=|title=|source=}}