PROBLEM I. How to Choose Foods Wisely 



Fig. 196 This chicken has polyneuritis, a disease 

 like beriberi in man. How can it be cjired? 



(ILLINOIS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION) 



their navy in the nineteenth century. 

 This disease was not new either; it had 

 long been known in China, Japan, and 

 other eastern countries; it is called beri- 

 beri (ber'ree-ber'ree). It, too, results in 

 exhaustion and eventually in death. There 

 is no bleeding as in scurvy; there is numb- 

 ness and paralysis. 



The diet of these sailors was largely 

 polished rice, the kind you ordinarily 

 eat. Thinking that the disease might be 

 caused by a faulty diet, the officials of 

 the Japanese navy, about 1880, ordered 

 that other foods be provided the men in 

 addition to polished rice. Very soon 

 thereafter beriberi outbreaks became less 

 frequent. Just what was wrong with the 

 original diet no one knew. The govern- 

 ment officials were content, since they 

 had hit on a better diet; but scientists 

 were not satisfied; their curiosity had 

 been aroused. 



Experiments to clear up the mystery of 

 beriberi. Some years after the new diet 



177 



had been ordered and its good results had 

 been proved, a Dutch scientist by the 

 name of Eijkman (ike'-man) became in- 

 terested in beriberi. He was stationed in 

 one of the Dutch colonies in the East 

 Indies \\ here he daily saw hundreds suf- 

 fering from beriberi in the hospital. He 

 had noticed that chickens living on a diet 

 of polished rice showed the same eflFects 

 as the patients. He used chickens, there- 

 fore, in a carefully controlled experiment. 

 First, he fed many of the birds a diet 

 consisting only of polished rice. They 

 developed a disease very much like beri- 

 beri. Then he divided his birds into two 

 groups; with half he continued the diet 

 of polished rice; to the other half he 

 gave not only the polished rice but also 

 the "polishings" or coatings of the rice 

 which are removed when the rice goes 

 through the mill. 



Shortly after they had received the 

 rice coatings this group of chickens re- 

 covered from the disease. The other 

 group died. Eijkman concluded that 

 there was something in the skin covering 

 the grain that prevented the disease. 

 When he ordered his patients to eat the 

 coatings of the rice, they too, recovered 

 from beriberi. 



Other biologists studied the chemical 

 make-up of the rice polishings in an at- 

 tempt to find out what substance in them 

 prevented beriberi. In 1911 Casimir Funk, 

 a Polish biologist, extracted the substance 

 and called it a "vitamine." Later this word 

 was changed to vitamin and the sub- 

 stance was called vitamin B. 



What other experiments showed that 

 vitamins existed? About this time scien- 

 tists made another discovery in nutrition 

 experiments on rats. They gave the rats 



