( 915 ) 
might, as mentioned before, prevent the formation of starch, but if 
I rightly understand the investigators, they did not act in that way : 
consequently this explanation does not hold good. Moreover they 
might hinder the growth of the bacilli or prevent fermentation. | 
know by experiment, ‘hat these substances when alcalised do not 
hinder the bacilli, they prevent the growth however undoubtedly 
by the acid they contain themselves. 
If on the contrary we admit that the symptoms of the disease 
depend on the fact that the fermentation in the intestines does not 
produce active poisons but deprives the body from feeding-substances 
(Nocut. ScuauMANN) without which it cannot continue to exist, it 
would be possible, that these were added again to the body by the 
beans called kadjang hidjoe etc. This point requires further investigation. 
Causal therapy will try to fight the bacillit) and the fermentation 
and its products in the intestinal canal. In this direction however 
as yet no experiments have been made with the exception of those 
with the above mentioned articles of food. Causal therapy can take 
another road by counteracting the influence of substances that have 
eventually crept into the blood, or by supplying such substances as 
may have been withdrawn from it. | know that Prof. Eykman is 
making experiments in that direction. 
In view of the observations of my predecessors, of my own 
investigations and of the fact that, in so far as I have hitherto 
been able to apprehend, neither the injection of the bacteria, nor 
that of the filtrate of acetified rice (interperitional or inter-muscular) 
excites Polyneuritis in chickens, I must admit that the bacilli causing 
fermentation deprive, from the intestine canal, the body of substances, 
by which the quick emaciation must be explained. (500 gr. in 4 days) 
at a slower process the symptoms of paralysis show themselves 
first, but at all events the withdrawal of these substances ultimately 
renders life impossible, and death is the consequence’). 
If really, as now-a-days is generally admitted, human Beri-beri and 
Polyneuritis gallinarum is to be attributed to the same or akin causes, 
1) Maurer thinks he can obtain this by acids (acidum lacticum, muriaticum, 
pbosphoricum). As the bacillus soon dies in acidiferous media, the acid produced 
by the bacillus itself applied in great abundance might act as a curative. 
*) In all therapeutical experiments it is strictly required to make with HULSHOFF 
PoLL a sharp distinction between the symptoms proper of Beri-beri and the 
subsequent consequences, on account of the degenerated nerves. Only against the former 
we may expect to find an active remedy. Moreover not all that we remark in 
chickens is applicable to mammals, as Horusr’s experiments with rice feeding of 
Cavyas have shown. 
5) Yamacrwa is of opinion that the regressive metamorphosis is a consequence 
of anaemia. 
