( 913 ) 
sterilized meat, whilst it is quite superfluous to add anything to it '). 
Instead of feeding-experiments 1 took fermentation-experiments. 
Though I acknowledge that these need not cover each other 
entirely, yet until now they supplied nothing that is contradictory 
to the facts observed by feeding, so that my experiments perhaps 
may explain these facts and plead powerfully for the suggestion that 
Beri-beri rests entirely on fermentation processes *). 
Moreover | think that it is of the greatest importance that these 
bacilli are found much more frequently in-doors than out-of-doors, 
that, in Europe at least, they are restricted to certain seasons, and 
that very dry air makes them disappear. 
This fact explains why Beri-beri is more frequent near the sea-shore 
(VORDERMAN), with bad ventilation (VORDERMAN), in houses built in the 
European way (v. pb. Bure); that expeditions in woody, marshy 
regions are notorious for the great number of Beri-beri patients 
(Djambi). Wherever the local conditions are favourable for the 
development, a so-called Beri-beri epidemy may break out, or a so- 
called Beri-beri house or ship may be found. If a house is strongly 
infected with these bacteria, the tenants can be attacked by Beri-beri 
from inhalation, from swallowing dryly, from drinking water, though 
they take their food (rice) ontside the building *), 
As the cultivation on various media and at various-temperatures 
taught me, how easily varieties may come into existence, and 
that the fermentation-process is moreover promoted by symbiosis, 
I suppose that varieties of this bacillus may exist that are extremely 
malicions. They obtain this quality most likely in the following 
manner. The bacillus must first accommodate itself to the medium, 
') A thick fleece of bacteria is formed at the surface of the fluid floating on 
the sterilized juice without acetifying it. 
*) It is by no means my intention to explain all symptoms, observed by mono- 
tonous feeding, by the fermentation excited through the bacillus. The want of 
nucleopotreides or nucleine (JEBBINK, NocHT, SCHAUMANN) may either predispose 
or promote the disease or be in itself the cause of it. This nucleine theory is 
not attacked by my investigations. A bridge might be built across, if it could be 
proved that nucleoproteides are analyzed by fermentation. In that case fermentation 
would not produce active destructive substances, kut death would be caused by 
depriving the body of the required food This theory appears to me very 
admissible, as up Lill now, L could not succeed in making chickens sick by inter- 
muscular injection of the pure fermentation fluid. 
5) So in the building of the doctor-djawaschooi at Batavia (1900) 30°/, of the 
pupils who to k their meals outside the school became ill. Would perhaps new 
walls offer a fit medium and this perhaps be the cause that rice turned so quickly 
sour in this new laboratory? BrenrLEy was likewise of opinion, that the 
generator of Beriberi must be a wall-bacillus. 
C 
