170 Vitamins in Human Nutrition
upon as a support. However, there are exceptions. Beri-
beri is not uncommon in northern parts of Labrador and
Newfoundland where the menu is made up mostly of white
bread, molasses, and salt pork. In 1910 a ship ran ashore
up there and lightened its cargo by unloading a large amount
of whole wheat flour, with the result that beri-beri dis-
appeared from the region for a year.
In the Japanese navy back in about 1880, one or two out
of every five men were sick with this disease. On one ship
195 out of 350 men were down at one time. A brilliant
Japanese naval officer concluded that the disease was due to
an inadequate diet, and to prove his point he was permitted
to experiment with two training ships. Both were sent on a
long cruise occupying about nine months. The regulation
diet was provided on one of these ships, while a better one
was allowed on the other. The ship with the regulation diet
had 169 cases of beri-beri and 25 deaths in a crew of 276.
On the other ship there were only 14 cases and no deaths.
A few years later, in 1897, Dr. Eijkman, a Dutch scientist
in Java, observed in fowls fed on polished rice a disease
which he believed was similar to beri-beri, and showed that
rice polishings contained something that prevented the
disease. He had a survey made of the jails in the Dutch
East Indies and the report showed that of every 10,000
prisoners fed on polished rice 3900 had beri-beri, while of
those fed on unpolished rice there was only 1 case in 10,000.
The fact that the diet was to blame and not an infection, as
many believed, was conclusively proved by taking 300 labor-
ers into the jungle where no infections from other human
beings could reach them, and where they could be isolated
from the unsanitary conditions prevailing in the native vil-
lages and on estates. Half of them were put on a diet of
polished rice, the other half on less refined food. In three