GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO VITAMIN THEORY 15 



ments he refuted the theories that beriberi might be due to the presence 

 of pathogenic organisms in the rice, to lack of mechanical stimulation 

 of the intestine, or to insufficiency of total food value, protein, or salts. 

 The explanation first offered by Eijkman was to the effect that the 

 condition is a state of intoxication brought about by the metabolism of 

 excessive quantities of starch and that in the silver-skin of the rice 

 (and in some other foods) there is to be found a substance or sub- 

 stances which counteract the toxic products of the disturbed metabolism. 

 As has been pointed out in the British Committee Report, the phar- 

 macological bias thus given by Eijkman to the interpretation of his 

 observations resulted in obscuring the fact that he had here adduced 

 experimental evidence of the presence in rice polishings, and some other 

 foods, of a substance or substances playing an important part in nutri- 

 tion and whose existence was previously unknown. 



Later Eijkman (1906) withdrew the hypothesis of a nerve poison 

 and stated clearly that there is present in rice polishings a substance of 

 a different nature than protein, fat or salts which is indispensable to 

 health and the lack of which causes "nutritional polyneuritis," — this 

 designation being used by Eijkman as the title of his second paper of 

 this date. Thus the existence of an antineuritic substance as something 

 different from the known foodstuffs but essential to normal nutrition 

 was clearly discovered by Eijkman long before the term vitamin was 

 proposed. Eijkman, therefore, seems to have been the first to produce 

 experimentally a nutritional-deficiency disease. Eijkman's excellent 

 pioneer work in this field does not seem to have received the attention 

 that it deserves, either from the chemical or the physiological point of 

 view. Even as regards the cause and cure of beriberi, the significance 

 of his work was not generally recognized until after several years dur- 

 ing which much new evidence relating to the dietary origin of the 

 disease beriberi and the substantial duplication of beriberi in the ex- 

 perimental polyneuritis of fowls was brought forward. Only a few 

 of the investigations of this period can be mentioned here. 



Grijns, in 1901, showed that the polyneuritis of fowls, produced 

 by feeding polished rice, could be prevented by adding the native bean, 

 katjang idjo (Phaseolus radiatus), to the polished rice diet. Hulshoff- 

 Pol (1902) then tested this bean and found it effective both as a pre- 

 ventive and curative agent in human beriberi. He emphasized: (1) that 

 a diet consisting too largely of highly milled rice will produce beriberi, 

 (2) that the disease can be prevented by the addition of beans to the 

 diet, (3) that beriberi must be due to some deficiency in the diet since 

 if the rice were toxic the disease could hardly be prevented simply 



