SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XX. No. 511 



The ship's carpenter, who died, slept by himself in the store- 

 room; his was a closed bunk, like all the others. The iirst mate 

 slept alone off the mess-room, in the after part of the ship; he 

 contracted the disease. 



We have then here the following situation : Toxic matters in 

 the atmosphere, either directly by the fermentation of an enor- 

 mous mass of sugar ' and the formation of the poisonous com- 

 pounds of carbon, or by a decomposition of the air depriving it of 

 part of its oxygen. We have a wet trip, the very weather in 

 which beri-beri, or kakke, flourishes in Japan. We have muscles 

 and peripheral nerves more or less exhausted by the pumping work 

 rendered necessary by the leak. 



We have, therefore, an image of the disease, accompanied in 

 the most manifest way by all its etiological factors, which leaves 

 nothing to be desired. 



The following facts relating to the export of sugars will per- 

 haps be of some Interest. Captain Durke tells me that all sugar 

 cargoes in the voyage blacken the paint;- he says, however, that 

 unless water gets into the cargo the sugar will not really ferment. 

 He has carried many cargoes from the West Indies, the Barba- 

 does, and all gave off the blackening gas; but he had never a ship 

 ferment before, nor had he ever an outbreak of beri-beri. There- 

 fore the fermentation is not the cause of the formation of that 

 sulphuretted hydrogen. The elder Mr. Hincken, a sugar broker, 

 one of the consignees, says he has many times entered the holds 

 of incoming sugar ships and always found them sweating from 

 the heat in the hold. It must be noted that in the East Indies 

 lime containing sulphur^ is used in the preparation (tempering) 

 of sugar for export to prevent fermentation; hence the blackening 

 gases. In the preparation of the cane-juice for export sugar in 

 the Philippines no molasses is formed. This is the only difference 

 in preparation between it and West Indian sugar ; in the latter 

 there is always a formation of molasses. It is the addition of 

 an excess of lime to sugar which prevents the formation of mo- 

 lasses, by the more abundant production of saccharates ; hence, if 

 the lime is very sulphurous, we naturally have an excess of sul- 

 phuretted hydrogen developed. The sulphuretted hydrogen, if 

 you consider these data, can have nothing to do with the disease; 

 it blackened the walls, that is all. The captain has had walls 

 blackened frequently without beriberi. One question in passing. 

 Why did beri-beri never occur in any ship exporting sugar from 

 Brazil and the West Indies ? The cause may be that the trips of 

 these vessels are comparatively short. Moreover, peculiar care 

 is taken of the Brazilian sugar, for it is known to be a very poison- 

 ous stuff; that is, to ferment very easily. 



Each of the facts mentioned above; that is, emanations of car- 

 bonic compounds, exhaustion, tropical wet weather, may not by 

 itself produce beri-beri. But here we have them united, and their 

 union is strong enough to overcome the resistance of Europeans. 

 I have elsewhere affirmed my belief in the operation of carbonic 

 compounds in the production of kakke in Japan.* I think that I 

 have a right to consider this case as strongly corroborating my 

 theory. Dr. Takaki, while admitting the action of the carbonic 

 compounds, supposes them to act in a quite different way from that 

 in which they have evidently acted in this case. He believes 

 carbonaceous food to be the cause of the intoxication. Here the 

 effect was produced by inhalation ; this is evident by the indis- 

 position of the ship's dog. That animal, as well as the four men 

 who had not contracted beri-beri, was continually vomiting. If 

 the gas operated to make these beri-beri- free men sick, and it 

 was undoubtedly the gas, it was by being inhaled. Now why 

 should the gas not have produced the disease in the others in the 

 same manner; that is, by inhalation? This does away with the 

 theory of beri-beri intoxication through carbonaceous food. 



Dr. Takaki claims to have eradicated kakke, which is the same 

 as European beri-beri, from the Japanese Navy, by the elimina- 



' 10,000 sacks out of 50,000 up to this time unloaded have been involved In 

 the process, and It is expected that a'jout one-third of what remains In the 

 bottom of the bark wUl he found damaged ; that is, about one-fourth of the 

 whole cargo, 500 tons, has suffered. 



2 The ship's paint was black from sulphuretted hydrogen. I tested some 

 of it. 



3 In the leery process, bisulphite of lime is used. 



' Univ. Med. Mag., January, 1891. Sei-I-Kwai Med. Journ. XI., No. 2. 



tion of rice from the diet of the men. That he has eradicated it, 

 I believe. But that it is due entirely to the change in the diet, I 

 do not believe. The men have been at the same time removed 

 from the influence of those fumes of carbon, amidst which the 

 Japanese live and breathe. In Japanese houses charcoal is con- 

 tinually burned for heating and cooking, and the natural humidity 

 of the hot season keeps over everything a deep layer of pernicious 

 gases. In the new navy the men are not exposed to the same 

 influences, their heating being done by steam or coal. The fact 

 that the removal of the beri-beri patients to higher altitudes, 

 where the air is pure, results in improvement is proof positive 

 that the poison is inhaled. This fact, that is, the advantage of 

 altitude, must remind most readers of that unfortunate Neapolitan 

 dog, who inhales the oxide of carbon of the "cave of the dog," 

 for the instruction and amusement of the visitor. The gas, which 

 in this grotto issues from some fissures, is so heavy that it remains 

 in the inferior part of it, and does not reach the nostrils of men ; 

 but the dog, breathing in the nether layers, falls down at once in 

 a paroxysm of asphyxia. 



It is my opinion, if similar changes in the heating methods to 

 those which were introduced into the navy, were adopted 

 by the people at large the benefit conferred on the navy would 

 become a general, a national one. They have only to stop the 

 burning of charcoal. 



That Europeans in Japan rarely contract beri-beri is partly ex- 

 plained by the fact that they are not exposed to charcoal fumes 

 in their houses. 



However I do not contend that inhalation of carbonic gases, is 

 the only etiological factor of beri-beri. These factors are neces- 

 sary : Weakness, produced, on the one hand, by a feeble non- 

 albuminous diet, incapable of maintaining the natural resistance 

 of the body to morbid influences, or by climatic or other like in- 

 fluences,^ debilitating the muscular fibres and peripheral nerves, 

 and the toxic influence itself, that is, the presence of carbonic gases 

 when it continues for a sufficient time. 



ORIGIN OF THE LINES OF MARS. 



BY PROFESSOR HENRT W. PARKER. 



On examining a copy of Schiaparelli's Map of Mars, May, 1889, 

 I called the attention of the geology class of Iowa College to the 

 striking general coincidence in the direction of the lines with 

 those of coast and mountain trends on the earth, and I referred to 

 the observations on these by Professor Benjamin Peirce, and a 

 suggested explanation by Professor James D. Dana. The coinci- 

 dence must have occurred to many persons; but I find no refer- 

 ence to it except in a paper by the younger Darwin (G. H. Dar- 

 win) read before the Royal Society in 1878, and printed in the 

 ■' Transactions," to which, as dealing with coast-lines, I was re- 

 cently referred by Professor Wolcott Gibbs and by S. C. Becker of 

 the U. S. Geological Survey. Mr. Darwin's remarks were 

 founded on a previous and probably much less detailed map of 

 Mars in " Append ice alle Memorie della Sooieta degli Spettro- 

 scopesti Italiani," Vol. VII., 1878. His papers (in Parts 1 and 2 

 of "Transactions," Vol. 170) relating to terrestrial physics are 

 ' ' On the Bodily Tides of Viscous and Semi elastic Spheroids, and 

 on the Ocean Tides upon a Yielding Nucleus," and "On the 

 Precession of a Viscous Spheroid, and on the Remote History of 

 the Earth."" In the latter paper, referring to the dragging of 

 tidal protuberance greater at the equatorial regions than at the 

 polar, and the consequent distortion of a yielding globe, he says: 

 " The screwing of the earth's mass [as a viscous spheroid in 

 remote ages, his meaning seems to be] varies inversely as the sixth 

 power of the moon's distance multiplied by the angular velocity 



6 The temperature in the ship's cabin, during the entire voyage nearly, was 

 over 80°; in the sun, in the Indian Ocean and tropics, it was as high as 126°. In 

 Japan, kakke occurs in the season when the sun is very hot and the air very 

 damp, and the days when these conditions are particularly oppressive, the 

 patients are regularly worse, 



^ For some pertinent comparisons between the physics of the earth and of 

 Mars, with special reference to the state of internal stress of an elastic sphere 

 under tide-generating forces, but with no mention of the lines of Mars, see 

 Mr. Darwin's paper, " On the Stresses caused in the Interior of the Earth by 

 Weight of Continents and Mountains," in the same "Transactions," Vol. 173. 



