— IÇP — 
fèrent ; mais les premiers résultats font prévoir que la méthode 
d’immunisation pourra être appliquée aux jeunes Chiens qui 
souvent à leurs premières saisons de chasse sont mordus par les 
Vipères, et y perdent tout au moins l’odorat. 
Laboratoire cT H erpétologie d’n Muséum d'hist. naturelle. 
The etiology of beri-beri 
By Richard P. STRONG and P.-C. CROWELL. 
Notwithstanding the large number of very valuable observa¬ 
tions <fhat hâve been reported in the literature on this subject du- 
ring the past few years, at the présent time there is no theory of 
the cause of beri-beri that has been entirely accepted. 
While very extensive feeding experiments by numerous investi- 
gators hâve been performed regarding the production of Polyneu- 
ritis gallinarum (Eijkman) and while a few similar experiments 
hâve been employed, even sometimes successfully, by several 
investigators in relation to the production of a beri-beri like disease 
in other animais, nevertheless there has been regarding the étio- 
logy of beri-beri not a single experiment performed upon man 
which from a scie n<t'i fie standpoint we can regard in any way as 
a crucial test of the infections or non-infectious nature of this 
disease , with the exception of that one of Fraser and Stanton 
in 1907. At the close of their publication regarding this experi¬ 
ment these authors State that the resuit of their experiment lends 
support to the view that beri-beri has, if not its origin in, at 
least an intimate relationship with the consumption of white rice, 
and justifies further research along these lines. 
Experiments on fowls hâve been of very great benefit in eluci- 
dating many problems relating to the etiology and cure of beri- 
beri : nevertheless without similar observations on man the results 
obtained with fowls would not be applicable to man. 
The following feeding experiments which had in view the ob- 
ject throwing further light upon the cause of beri-beri and of de- 
termining whether the disease was of an infectious or non-infec¬ 
tious nature were begun late in the year 1909, but were not com- 
