Vie PT HILIPPINE 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 
Vie T SEPTEMBER, 1906 ‘ No. 7 
STUDIES IN BERIBERI. 
By MAXIMILIAN HERzZOG. 
(From the Biological Laboratory, Bureau of Science.) 
INTRODUCTION. 
The investigation of the many unsolved problems in beriberi, both in 
regard to the character and the special and general features of the 
disease, presents many profound difficulties. Almost all modern writers 
have called attention to this fact. For instance, Wright,’ in the introduc- 
tion to his recent monograph on beriberi, says: . 
Probably there is no disease whose etiology is so much a matter of speculation 
as that of beriberi. Certainly there is no disease whose literature when read 
leaves one in so great a state of mental confusion. Nitrogen starvation, pernicious 
anemia, infected fish and raw fish diet, arsenical, carbon dioxide, and miasmatic 
intoxication, bacterial and plasmodial infection are amongst the many direct 
causes put forward to account for it. They are largely speculative or founded on 
superficial or one-sided observation. No one of them is generally accepted. Many 
of them may and ought to be excluded as chief pathogenic factors. 
Durham,’ who succeeded Wright as an investigator of beriberi in the 
Malay Peninsula, and who came to conclusions materially differing 
from those of his predecessor, likewise emphasizes the great difficulties 
encountered in the study of this disease, and writes as follows: 
The literature of beriberi is so great and at the same time so divergent, and 
so contradictory are the views and records that have been given, that I have 
‘Wright: An Inquiry into the Etiology and Pathology of Beriberi. Publications 
of the Federated Malay States, Singapore (1902), May. 
* Durham, Herbert E.: Notes on Berberi in the Malay Peninsula and on Christ- 
mas Island. Journal of Hygiene (1904), 4, 112. 
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