Chapter II 



ANEURINE (THIAMINE) 



I. fflSTORICAL 

 Beriberi 



The existence in foodstuffs of substances essential for the proper 

 functioning of the animal organism was first recognised by C. Eijkman 

 and H. Grijns, two Dutch medical officers working in the Dutch East 

 Indies. They suggested that beriberi was not caused by a toxic 

 principle or by infection, as had been supposed, but by a nutritional 

 deficiency. 



Discovery of the Vitamins 



In 1911, C. Funk^ published a series of papers describing the 

 isolation from rice polishings of a substance capable of curing beri- 

 beri. In the following year he wrote : ^ " The deficient substances, 

 which are of the nature of organic bases, we will call ' vitamines ', 

 and we will speak of a beriberi or scurvy vitamine, which means a 

 substance preventing the special disease." The word " vitamine " 

 remained in use until 1920, by which time it had become clear that 

 only a few of these substances were organic bases. It was then 

 proposed ^ that the name should be changed to " vitamin " with 

 the implication that a vitamin is " a neutral substance of undefined 

 composition ". 



Although several of the vitamins contain nitrogen atoms and are 

 basic, only one or two contain the amino group, NHg, characteristic of 

 a primary amine. One of these is vitamin B^, now known in this 

 country as aneurine hydrochloride and in America as thiamine hydro- 

 chloride. At first it was called vitamin B, and it is the absence of 

 this substance that is responsible for beriberi, which, as already men- 

 tioned above, was the first deficiency disease to be recognised as such. 

 The condition is due to the use of polished rice as a major article of 

 diet, the bulk of the vitamin being contained in the outer layers of 

 the grain which are removed in the processing. The resulting rice 

 polishings have a marked curative effect on the course of the disease 

 and an aqueous extract possesses similar activity. 



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