In this comprehensive account of the history and treatment of beriberi, Kenneth
Carpenter traces the decades of medical and chemical research that solved the puzzle posed by this mysterious disease. Caused by the lack of a minute quantity of the chemical thiamin, or
vitamin B1 in the diet, beriberi is characterized by weakness and loss of feeling in the feet and legs, then swelling from fluid retention, and finally heart failure. Western doctors working in Asia after 1870 saw it as the major disease in native armed forces and prisons. It was at first attributed to miasms (poisonous vapors from damp soil) or to
bacterial infections. In Java, chickens fed by chance on white rice lost the use…
