272 SCIENCE REMAKING THE WORLD 



of a disease which he called "polyneuritis gallinarum" 

 and recognized as similar to human beri-beri. With 

 chickens as experimental animals he was then able to 

 supplement his medical investigations and to demon- 

 strate that beri-beri was brought about in the Java 

 cases by long-continued consumption of white rice and 

 that the act of polishing removes an important con- 

 stituent of the rice. The Dutch investigators, how- 

 ever, failed to see the full significance of their findings. 

 Eijkman himself believed that the starch of the rice 

 grain gave rise to toxins or poisons which acted on the 

 nervous system and that this toxic action was prevented 

 by material in the silver skin or, as he later showed, in 

 the pericarp of the grain. The foundations laid by 

 Eijkman stimulated many other workers to follow up 

 his lead and his greatest contribution was in providing 

 a test animal in which could be induced the disease and 

 with which diets could be tested quantitatively. 



The search for the preventive substance to which rice 

 polishings owed their beri-beri protecting power, how- 

 ever, began actively with Eijkman's contribution in 

 1897. Other foodstuffs were studied and Grijns found 

 certain beans to carry this protective substance.' 

 Schaumann extended the list of curative substances to 

 include yeast. Other workers then sought to determine 

 the value of the curative material itself. It was thought 

 at one time that phosphorus compounds were the re- 

 sponsible factors. In his book, "The Vitamines," 

 Casimir Funk, the author of the term vitamin, sum- 

 marizes the situation up to the time of introduction ot 

 the vitamin theory (1911) as follows: 



