An inquiry concerning the etiology of beri-beri / by Henry Fraser and A.T. Stanton.

  • Fraser, Henry, 1874-
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An inquiry concerning the etiology of beri-beri / by Henry Fraser and A.T. Stanton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    107/374 (page 1)
    THE ETIOLOGY OF BERI-BERI. rpHE suggestion of a causal relationship between the consumption of white rice and the disease beri-beri was first formally made in this country by Braddon.1 This observer also drew attention to the important fact that those who consumed rice that had been parboiled before husking remained free from the disease, as did also the native Malays who consumed rice prepared by primitive methods of pounding and winnowing. A series of observations made by the writers2 in 1907 on two parties of labourers, under conditions which excluded or adequately controlled the operation of factors other than diet, confirmed the correctness of this view of the causation of the disease. The prior observations of Fletcher3 and Lucy 4 in this country and of Dubrael5 in Indo-China and the recently published observations of Ellis6 furnish further testimony, and it may now be claimed that the theory rests on a solid basis of evidence. The mechanism by which white rice was able to produce this result has remained obscure. Braddon suggested that “ the cause of the disorder is not indeed rice, qua rice, or as an article of diet, but diseased rice; rice from which poison derived from decay, due perhaps to some fungus, or mould, or germ, or spore, originally perhaps growing upon the husk, has become mixed during the process of milling; or upon which such fungus may have grown and such poison have been produced after decortication.” Eijkman'' from ex- periments on fowls concluded that a definite poison exists commonly in rice and that for this poison or its effects something in the pericarp is an antidote. Dubruel conceived the ingestion of an organism associated with white rice, which organism multiplying in the body produced the disease. Following the line of thought suggested by the poison hypothesis researches were undertaken to determine whether from white rices actually associated with outbreaks of beri-beri there could be extracted by means of various solvents any substance or substances recognisable by chemical methods as poisonous in character. These researches