Bt Albert: Treatment of Infantile Beriberi 85 
infant with nutritive elements, probably the vitamines, in which 
the beriberic milk is found deficient. 
According to Funk these vitamines play an important role 
in the metabolism as do the hormones, ferments, and internal 
secretions. 
Bearing in mind that infantile beriberi under a clinical as- 
pect is principally a vagotonia—an abnormal irritability of the 
vagus—it is logical to believe that the curative action of the 
extract is due to the fact that it supplies the vagus with the 
necessary vitamines for the normal performance of its functions. 
Using the words of Eppinger and Hess, we can say that the 
extract of tiqui-tiqui is a vagotropic drug, like pilocarpin, which 
has a selective and specific action on the vagus nerve. 
By supplying the vagus with its much-needed vitamines, its 
abnormal irritability, manifested by vomiting, by angina pectoris 
(whining and restlessness), and by polypncea because of its 
bronchial and pulmonary terminations, entirely disappears. 
The failure of the extract to cure the aphonia can be attrib- 
uted to a very advanced degenerative neuritis of the recurrent 
branches of the vagus nerve, which are the first to be affected 
in all cases of dietetic deficiency as evidenced by the clinical fact 
that the aphonic form constityites from 80 to 90 per cent of all 
cases of infantile beriberi. 
