PHOSPHORUS STARVATION: I. 



85 



Balland 11 has shown this very plainly by a number of analyses which are given 

 in the the following table : 



Analyses of hand husked, machine husked, ground and polished rice. 



Kind of rice. 



Water. 



Nitrog- 

 enous 

 subs- 

 tance. 



Fats. 



Carbohy- 

 drates. 



Cellulose. 



Ash. 





11.00 



9.05 



7.82 

 7.82 

 7.65 



2. SO 

 0.60 

 0.40 

 0.30 



64.93 



1. 12 



1.10 

 0.56 

 0.44 

 0.36 





13.00 

 12. 90 

 13.30 



77.74 ' 0.28 

 78.20 0.24 





Husked, ground and polished ,. 



78.18 



0.21 



The main constituents of the ash are the phosphates (53.7 per cent P 2 5 ). 

 Therefore Eyknian has studied the question as to the extent to which this dep- 

 rivation of phosphorus may cause the harmful action of white rice, but he 

 could not find sufficient evidence to reach a definite conclusion. Two years ago 

 Schaumann a endeavored to show that the disease termed "scurvy of sailing 

 vessels," is caused by a lack of nucleophosphoric acid which is extracted or 

 destroyed by certain sterilization processes, and he argued that a similar lack of 

 organic phosphorus (nucleoproteins) in the food, especially in the white rice, may 

 produce beriberi. 



It can easily be believed that a constant lack of phosphorus in the 

 food may bring about a degeneration of exactly those tissues which 

 are rich in phosphorus, namely, of the nerves. I took up the ques- 

 tion myself at this point, directing my investigations especially toward 

 the question of the influence of the phosphorus. Meanwhile, there has 

 appeared a second publication by Schaumann, 13 continuing his researches, 

 especially with experiments on animals, and quite recently, in a short 

 paper Praser 14 and Stanton stated that the phosphorus content of 

 a rice is an indicator of its capability of producing beriberi. 



The variations in the content of phosphorus are the most striking 

 changes produced by the process of milling, as the following analyses 

 of different classes of Philippine rice, made by me, will show : 



Variety of rice. 



Laguna rice, unpolished 



Laguna rice, polished 



"Macan," Bulacan Province, machinery rice 



"Macan," Bulacan Province, native made, freshly husked 



rice 



"Valenciana" rice, highly polished 



Average Manila rice 



Protein. 



Per cent. 



Per cent. 



0.557 



9.00 



0.314 



7.87 



0.340 





0. 455 





0.197 





0.33 





"■Compt. rend. Acad. sci. (1895), 121, 561-566. 

 v -Loc. tit. Arch. f. Schiffs-u. Trop.-Eyg. Beiheft. (1908), 12, 37. 

 lz Arch f. Schiffs-u. Trop.-B.yg. Beiheft. (1909), 13, 82-90. 



14 The Etiology of Beriberi. Studies from the Institute for Medical Research, 

 F. M. S. Kulua Larnpur (1910). 



