THE PROTECTIVE POWER OF NORMAL HUMAN MILK AGAINST 

 POLYNEURITIS GALLINARUM (BERIBERI) 



By R. B. Gibson 



(From the Laboratory of Physiology, College of Medicine and Surgery, 

 University of the Philippines) 



Andrews ^ has pointed out in a recent paper that the cause of 

 infantile beriberi, to which the high death rate of infants in 

 Manila is in part attributable, is primarily due to the quality of 

 the mothers' milk. The disease is not an infection or toxaemia 

 of either the mother or child. Presumably the etiology is 

 associated with a deficiency of the protective substances or 

 "vitamines" - of the milk, induced by the too exclusive con- 

 sumption of milled rice by the mother. The symptoms of the 

 beriberi may not be apparent in the mother on the first examina- 

 tion, but usually appear later if the child continues nursing. 



Probably with a deficiency (of the protective substances) in her diet the 

 mother draws on her own storehouse for this substance for her child, thus 

 diminishing her own supply and producing the disease in herself. 



Doctor Andrews and I had planned to study the protective 

 power of the milk of the mothers of infantile beriberi cases, the 

 diagnosis of which could be verified by autopsy. However, I 

 have not yet been able to obtain a case in which autopsy was 

 permitted and which, at the same time, would supply sufficient 

 milk for experimentation. The milk obtained was scant, and 

 the secretion ceased in the course of a few days in the two in- 

 stances where the autopsy was allowed and the diagnosis verified. 

 Some control observations on the protective power of normal 

 human milk have been made, and I have thought it worth while 

 to present these in a short paper. 



In view of the conclusive evidence that rice polyneuritis is a 

 nutritional disease caused by dietetic deficiency, it seems hardly 

 necessary to accept the presence of a toxic substance in the milk 

 as suggested by Guerrero ^ from experiments on the frog heart. 

 Analyses of the milk of women with beriberi infants, reported 

 by Andrews, show that some of the samples are quite normal, 



' This Journal, Sec. B (1912), 7, 67. 



' C/. Funk., Journ. Physiol. (1913), 46, 173, and earlier papers. 



*BuU. Manila Med. Soc. (1912), 4, 167. 



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