know that the beriberi of the Eastern Peninsula, of the Eastern Archipelago, of the Philippines, of China and Japan is a sequel of a diet into which overmilled rice enters as the principal element, that is rice from which the entire pericarp and germ have been removed; and that in this pericarp and germ there is a substance essential for the proper nutrition of the nervous system of man and of many other warm-blooded vertebrates.
If a fowl be fed on paddi exclusively, that is rice from which the husk has not been removed, the fowl will thrive and very likely gain weight; but if it be fed on a diet exclusively of white rice, that is rice from which the pericarp has been completely removed, it will after a short time show signs of peripheral neuritis, lose weight, and, if the exclusive diet be persisted in, die with all the signs of a multiple peripheral neuritis. If a fowl which, in consequence of such a diet, has begun to show signs of peripheral neuritis be given regularly some of the polishings of the rice, that is the dust or remains of the pericarp, which had been removed in the process of milling,
fixing his attention on the remarkable and admitted fact that of the various races inhabiting the Malay Peninsula the Chinese are infinitely the most subject, the Klings (an immigrant Indian race) infinitely the least subject to beriberi, came to the conclusion that the excessive liability of the one race and immunity of the other are attributable to the difference in the way in which their staple food— rice— is prepared for the market. The Klings live on what Braddon calls "cured rice," that is rice which when garnered, and before husking, is boiled and dried. The Chinese use " uncured rice," that is rice that is husked without preliminary boiling. Braddon held that rice (paddi) is liable in certain localities to be attacked by a germ which in its multiplication produces a toxin, and that this toxin, which is not destroyed by cooking, is the cause of beriberi. The germ is destroyed by the boiling to which " cured rice " is subjected before husking; hence the freedom of the Klings from beriberi and the excessive liability of the Chinese. That there is no racial insusceptibility in the Klings is proved by their being attacked by beriberi when they chance to get imprisoned and are placed on the same food as their Chinese fellow-prisoners. These views received support from a carefully conducted experiment by Fraser and Stanton, who fed a gang of coolies on "cured rice" and another gang on " uncured rice," both sets of coolies being in other respects under apparently identical conditions, with the result that many of those 011 uncured rice sickened with beriberi, whilst those on cured rice escaped the disease.
