THE ANTIBERIBERI VITAMINE 



211 



the addition of large quantities of rice hastens the onset of the 

 disease, Chamberlain, Bloombergh and Kilbourne (556) noted that 

 the disease developed sooner on a smaller rice feeding. They found, 

 in fact, that beriberi arises in hunger. These observations were later 

 corroborated by Eijkman and Hoogenhuyze (557) . They found that 

 the outbreak of beriberi could be obtained by starvation, especially 

 when the precaution was taken to wash out the organism with water. 

 The starvation beriberi resulting thereby could be cured on the 

 addition of vitamine. At all events, Theiler, Green and Viljoen (I.e. 

 278) noted spontaneous cures in animals receiving only water. These 

 therapeutic results were attributed to the mobilization of the vitamine 

 present in the tissues. Walshe (558) found no beriberi in chickens 

 that had been starving a long time ; these observations have not yet 

 been made on pigeons, and it is an open question as to whether 

 starvation beriberi may develop in other animals, and also in man. 

 The influence of the composition of the diet on the occurrence of 

 beriberi was investigated by the author (559) in 1913. At that time, 

 there appeared the paper of Abderhalden and Lampe (I.e. 25), in 

 which they formulated the "toxic" theory of beriberi. The symp- 

 toms of the disease were apparent later on cooked rice than on raw 

 rice. This observation, which in itself was correct, but which was 

 thought to be due to the elimination of toxins, may be explained in a 

 very simple way. Cooked rice takes up so much water that it is 

 impossible to feed an amount corresponding to uncooked rice, and 

 the results appear as follows: 



However, if pigeons were fed cooked rice corresponding to 10 grams 

 of raw rice, then the results were somewhat different : 



COOKED RICE 



RAW RICE 



