THE TREATMENT OF INFANTILE BERIBERI WITH THE EXTRACT 
OF TIQULTIQUI* 
By JOSE ALBERT 
(From the College of Medicine and Surgery, University of the Philippimes) 
Infantile beriberi is without doubt the most interesting prob- 
lem of pediatrics and of general medicine in the Philippine 
Islands. It is responsible for that phenomenon, without parallel 
in the whole civilized world, in which infant mortality among 
breast-fed children is greater than the mortality among the arti- 
ficially fed, thus giving the impression that human milk as a 
food is a scourge among infants, rather than the “magic liquor’ 
which guarantees their lives. Because of its ravages among 
children under one year of age, 38 per cent of which are victims 
of this disease, infantile beriberi constitutes the most formidable 
barrier to both economical and political aggrandizement of these 
Islands. 
Since this disease was discovered, all efforts of therapeutics 
have been to suppress the cause, following the well-known maxim 
of healing pathogenically. Believing that this disease was a 
true intoxication, Professor Hirota of Japan has recommended 
the discontinuance of maternal feeding, which according to him 
is the “materia peccans,’ and the substitution of artificial 
feedings. In the treatment of this disease Hirota has established 
the two following principles: 
First, that infantile beriberi is a true intoxication produced by the ingestion 
of beriberic milk. 
Second, that the treatment of the disease by means of drugs is of little or 
no value at all. That the discontinuance of maternal feeding is the 
only and safe means of cure, provided that the disease is not too far 
advanced in which ease it is no longer of any value. 
According to the same author the improvement which follows 
the discontinuance of maternal feeding is a rapid one, occurring 
on the third day. The complete cure with the exception of the 
aphonia, which lasts for several weeks, takes place in the major- 
ity of cases during the first week. 
* Read at the annual meeting of the waoeae Islands Medical Associa- 
tion, Manila, November 4-7, 1914. 
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