1474 
case we may reasonably assume with GriJNs that a larger quantity 
of protective substances have been consumed. 
With a view to its more constant results we had recourse to 
forced feeding, whenever the appetite decreased appreciably. However, 
from my Indian experiments, with a free diet of polished rice or 
starch, it appeared that, unlike the experience of CHAMBERLAIN ©. Ss. 
the loss of weight was never so considerable (28°/,) as with 
deprivation of food (40—53,7°/,). As could be expected, a still 
greater difference with our starvation experiments is found when 
fowls are fed foreibly (with 50—60 grms of polished rice daily), 
viz. a loss of weight on the average of 18.2 °/,, as against 
44,7 percent with our starving animals. Some birds lose weight 
almost from the beginning, also when fed forcibly; others however, 
maintain their weight, or even increase it, before, towards the end, 
a retrogression reveals itself in consequence of the digestion being 
interfered with, when the crop does not readily discharge itself. In 
this case the disease can break out, when the body weight is about 
equal to or greater than that at the beginning of the experiment. 
This was [the case with 7 out of 57 fowls, weighed at regular 
intervals, all being fed forcibly with polished rice, and likewise 
with 5 out of 44 pigeons fed in the same way. Other researchers 
(VEDDER and Crark'), Gipson’), Tasawa l.c., Masayo SEGAWA le), 
report similar cases. 
For all this, the onset of the disease is not infrequently preceded 
by considerable emaciation, especially with a free diet of polished 
rice or simple starch, whereas, on the other hand, beri-beri 
most often attacks people, apparently in a favourable condition of 
nutrition. As early as 1890 I pointed to this, as it seemed, character- 
istic difference between beri-beri and polyneuritis gallinarum ®), 
which also attracted the attention of later observers. In my sub- 
sequent reports, however, I was in a position to point out that 
emaciation is not an essential feature of experimental polyneuritis, 
as it was shown that, when supplementing the rice with a quantity 
of meat, or of rice-polishings, not sufficient to prevent the outbreak 
of the disease, but sufficient to retard it, at the same time a favour- 
able nutritive condition was maintained. This has, evidently, escaped 
most investigators who still stick to emaciation as a constant symptom 
of polyneuritis gallinarum. Only in recent years have other writers, 
1) Pupp. Journ. of Science, Sect. B, vol. 7, p. 423, 1912. 
2) Pupp. Journ. of Science, Sect. B, vol. 8, p. 351, 1913. 
3) Geneesk. Tijdschr. v. Ned. Ind., Dl. 30, blz. 295, 1890. 
