30 THE VITAMINES 



show that some natives, like the races of Tamils, who live on "cured" 

 or "parboiled" rice, remain free from this disease. This rice was so 

 prepared that it was steamed before using; the husk came off easily, 

 thus obviating the necessity for polishing. To convince himself of 

 the accuracy of Braddon's observations, Fletcher (45) in 1905 under- 

 took, in the Kuala Lumpur insane asylum, some research on lunatics, 

 which lasted for one year. His purpose was to determine the differ- 

 ence between "cured" and ordinary decorticated rice. Throughout 

 the entire perod, the diet varied only qualitatively; out of 120 

 patients on polished rice, 36 contracted beriberi from which 18 died, 

 while from 123 patients on "parboiled" rice, only two developed 

 beriberi, and these two cases were admitted as such into the hospital. 

 In 1909, Ellis (46), working at the insane asylum in Singapore, 

 reported similar investigations, which extended back as far as 1901. 

 In his fruitful statistics, he showed definitely that the number of 

 beriberi cases decreased steadily from year to year, upon gradually 

 substituting steamed rice for polished rice. Analagous results were 

 also obtained on healthy laborers by Fraser (47) . 



In 1897, Eijkman (48) (cf. Vordermann), found that beriberi is 

 brought about by a long continued consumption of white rice, since 

 polishing removes a substance which is protective against the out- 

 break of beriberi. The Dutch investigators were of the opinion 

 that the most important part of the rice grain, the so-called "silver- 

 vlissen" (silver skin), could neutralize the toxins of white rice. There- 

 upon, it fell to Fraser and Stanton (49) to make clear the point that 

 upon polishing rice, more than just the "silver skin" is lost. 



Eijkman's (50) discovery of experimental beriberi marked a great 

 step forward. This finding was made accidentally since Eijkman 

 observed that chickens which fed upon the remains of the food used 

 in a hospital for beriberi died of a disease which he recognized oppor- 

 tunely to be similar to human beriberi This discovery, which was 

 made in 1896 (the disease was called "poly neuritis gallinarum"), 

 made it possible to get away from experiments upon man, and assured 

 the collection of more valuable experimental data in a shorter time. 



After the discovery of experimental beriberi, Eijkman went a 

 step further. He found that the addition of the pericarp of the rice 

 kernel, or even the rice bran, to white rice made it possible to prevent 

 the occurrence of beriberi in animals. . For these observations, 

 however, he did not find the correct explanation; he believed that the 



