IN CENTRAL DUTCH NEW GUINEA 227 



they were still too frightened to allow me to gain their 

 confidence. 



Deprived as we were of any food except a small 

 allowance of rice and tinned meat, my whole party 

 was getting very miserable and in a low state of 

 health. Finally, one day I discovered that one of my 

 boys had contracted beri-beri. 1 This disease, which 



either (1) that the tobacco plant is indigenous to New Guinea, 

 or (2) that the tobacco plant was introduced there from America 

 at a period of which there is no historical record. EDITOR. 



1 Steady investigations into the causation of beri-beri are 

 being made by the British medical authorities in the South Seas. 

 The Papuan Government medical officer in his 1911 report 

 states 



" Although the staple diet of indentured natives has been rice 

 throughout the Territory, we have been on the whole not much 

 troubled with this disease. Last year about thirty cases occurred 

 at the Lakekamu gold-field, but it disappeared about September, 

 and no further cases were reported till May this year, when the 

 Government medical officer reported eleven cases, with three 

 deaths. The Central District has been apparently free, the cases 

 mentioned in the report on the Native Hospitals having been 

 brought in about August 1910, from Lakekamu. In February, 

 about thirty cases were reported as occurring at Woodlark Island. 

 As I have had no further news from that quarter, I presume that 

 no further cases occurred. In the meantime the Government 

 have been making inquiries from various sources in Eastern Asia, 

 with the result that we gather that the opinion is gaining ground 

 that too highly polished rice is a factor in causing the disease, 

 and that par-boiled or unpolished rice is coming into vogue as 

 an article of diet in place of the more polished article. We also 

 learned that the par-boiled rice on the market is unpalatable, 

 and that the unpolished rice was unattractive in appearance, 

 and a regular supply was uncertain. Assuming that the theory 

 of too highly polished rice was correct, and that a deficiency in 

 phosphatic salts might be a cause of the disease, we considered 



Q2 



