32 THE VITAMINES 



If the broth is regularly discarded then beriberi can easily occur, 

 even with whole rice. Based upon the findings of Eraser and Stanton, 

 Schaumann (57) thought of beriberi as a disturbance in metab- 

 olism due to a lack of organic phosphorus compounds. This theory 

 was likewise applied to other avitaminoses, such as scurvy and ship 

 beriberi. It found disciples (Simpson and Edie (58)), and dominated 

 this field of pathology till the advent of the vitamine theory. At 

 that tune, it was quite plausible to regard the great difference in 

 phosphorus content between white rice and rice bran, and the 

 undeserved acclaim of organic phosphorus compounds, as thera- 

 peutic factors in medicine. 



In the years that followed, there appeared in quick succession a 

 great number of experiments dealing with the chemical nature of the 

 curative substance. Various foodstuffs were used for this purpose. 

 Hulshoff Pol (59) showed that a watery extract of "Katjang-idjoe" 

 beans, clarified with lead acetate, contained the curative substance. 

 From this clear filtrate, Pol obtained a crystalline substance which 

 he called "X-acid;" there is a lack of further information as to 

 whether this substance possessed any characteristic physiological 

 properties. 



Schaumann (I.e. 2), who extended the list of curative substances 

 to include yeast (which was used by Thompson and Simpson (60) in 

 the treatment of human beriberi), investigated the influence of the 

 already known yeast constituents. Among these he investigated 

 the influence of yeast nucleic acid and yeast lecithin, but without 

 obtaining definite results. Eijkman (61) showed that the active 

 substance of yeast could be extracted with 88 per cent alcohol. Funk 

 (62) had already noticed this before, but by this method only an 

 incomplete extraction could be effected. Teruuchi (63) extracted rice 

 bran with dilute hydrochloric acid, neutralized the solution, thereby 

 precipitating phytin, then evaporated the filtrate and extracted the 

 residue with alcohol. This extract was active and contained only a 

 small proportion of its original phosphorus content. Similar results 

 were also obtained by Chamberlain and Vedder (64). They found 

 that the curative substance was adsorbed with animal charcoal and 

 tried to develop a procedure based upon this finding, but failed. 

 Shiga and Kusama (65) found that the active principle of rice bran 

 was destroyed by heating to 130C. with 0.5 per cent hydrochloric 

 acid or with 1 per cent soda solution, but not at 100C. 



