72 The Philippine Journal of Science i9i7 



deleterious because of something it lacks rather than because of 

 any harmful constituent. He further states that that something 

 which is lacking is needed for the growth and development of 

 nerves and that beriberi is a nutritional disease. 



Darling, (10) in 1914, showed the intimate relationship between 

 scurvy and beriberi in adults as to its etiology and that these 

 and certain other cachexias are the result of the continued use of 

 one-sided and deficient diet. 



Hess, (26) in his studies of infantile scurvy in children fed 

 with boiled milk, found that the symptomatology and pathology 

 of this assumes actual relationship to beriberi, which is empha- 

 sized by a dietetic test modeled after the tiqui-tiqui treatment 

 of infantile beriberi. He used middlings, the pericarp of wheat. 



Beriberi in adults has been reported by Little (30) from coun- 

 tries where rice is not used for diet. Signs of beriberi in 

 puppies were produced by feeding them with beriberi milk by 

 Andrews. (4) Neuritis was produced by Gibson (20) in birds 

 by feeding them with normal human milk along with polished 

 rice, and infantile scurvy by Hess (26) in children by using 

 boiled milk. 



Poverty and the so-called deficiency diseases are found in many 

 places, and yet infantile beriberi is met only in beriberi regions. 

 This seems to indicate that the disease is prevalent only in infants 

 nursed by women with an exclusive diet of rice (Well and Mouri- 

 quand).(5i) If this is not so, can we get the same good results 

 by using middlings, or the extract of tiqui-tiqui, or vice versa, 

 in treating infantile scurvy or infantile beriberi? 



Vedder(50) believes that the neuritis-preventing substance 

 is probably an organic base as claimed by Funk and showed that 

 it is not volatile and is destroyed by heat. 



Eraser and Stanton (15) and later Grijns(24) also demon- 

 strated that heat destroys the protective power of unpolished 

 rice. Can we produce infantile beriberi by feeding healthy 

 infants with the heated milk of nursing women whose diet is 

 other than unpolished rice or can it be produced by the heated 

 milk of healthy women on exclusive rice diet? 



Ingier(28) succeeded in producing scurvy in pregnant guinea 

 pigs by following Hoist and Frolich's diet and was able to trans- 

 mit the disease to their offspring. This experiment is in accord 

 with the experience of the local physicians of the preventive 

 value of changing the rice diet of the pregnant or nursing woman 

 with symptoms of beriberi for mongo, rice polishing, or bread. 



But those cases that do not show any symptom of beriberi 



