MT 10 LOGY 



Braddon considers that it was this increase of the rice that increased the 

 poison and made people. ill; but this ought to apply to both places. 



Moreover, Braddon considers deductions adverse to rice in the above 

 experiment to be fallacious, for he holds that the length of period of incar- 

 ceration of the above prisoners is an important factor; for the liability to 

 acquire the disease, he says, increases with and varies directly according 

 to the length of the time served in prison, which must be more than six months. 

 He points out that it is not stated how many long-sentence prisoners were 

 sent to the Old Gaol, which he thinks may not have been more than two or 

 three; and concerning these, he says, there is no proof that any of them 

 were kept for the period necessary to acquire the disease by rice intoxica- 

 tion. He therefore concludes that Travers' experience affords no ground 

 for opposing the theory that beri-beri is incurred through the consumption 

 of certain sorts of rice. 



5. Some Deficiency in the Food— (<«) Deficiency of Certain 

 Nitrogenous Complexes. — There is a growing tendency to consider 

 that certain diseases — e.g,, beri-beri, polyneuritis of birds, epidemic 

 dropsy, scurvy, experimental scurvy, infantile scurvy, and ship 

 beri-beri— are diseases due to the deficiency in some essential sub- 

 stance in the food. These diseases Funk classifies together as 

 ' deficiency disease,' and characterizes them by certain genera 

 symptoms — e.g., (i) Cachexia, with great loss of weight; (2) marked 

 nervous symptoms, generally of the nature of peripheral neuritis. 

 He divides these diseases into two groups — the beri-beri group 

 comprising beri-beri, polyneuritis in birds, and epidemic dropsy; 

 and the scurvy group. 



With regard to beri-beri, as already pointed out, Braddon drew 

 attention to the importance of rice as an aetiological factor. Eijk- 

 man in 1897 had shown that it could be prevented and cured by 

 the use of hand-milled rice. Prisoners fed upon red rice escaped, 

 and those on white rice were very prone to take the disease. Fraser 

 and Stanton showed that members of gangs of coolies, who had 

 previously remained quite healthy, developed beri-beri when fed 

 on white rice, while other members fed on brown rice remained 

 healthy. Strong and Grower observed that in eight out of seven- 

 teen prisoners fed on white rice, symptoms of beri-beri appeared 

 in from 61 to 75 days. The difference between these two forms of 

 rice is that the white rice is deprived of its subpericarpal layers 

 [vide pp. 104 and 105) by the process of milling. 



These layers contain a substance called by Funk beri-beri vita- 

 mine, which is probably a base belonging to the pyramidine group, 

 and has the formula — 



CO ^CigHigOg 



and not Ci7Hig04N(HN03), as previously stated. This substance 

 is soluble in water, alcohol, and acidulated alcohol, is dialyzable, 

 and can be destroyed by heating to 130° C. It is present in the 

 proportion of o-i gramme to the kilogramme of rice. According to 

 Funk, this substance is essential for the metabolism of nervous 

 tissue; and if it is not present in the dietary, must be supplied by the 



