History of Beriberi

Beriberi is a nutritional disorder caused by a deficiency of thiamin (vitamin B1). It is a characterized primarily by impairment of the nerves and heart.

Beriberi is found in Chinese medical writings 1200 years ago, and knowledge of the disease existed in Japan for about as long.

The disease was accurately described for the first time in 1629 by the Leiden physician Jacobs de Bondt.

He noted that the word ‘beriberi’ was derived from a local word for sheep because of the tottering walk of those affected disease.

However, it only became important when disease when the introduction of steel rice mills. Then, for fifty years, from 1870 to 1920, it was dominant disease in the East.

In the 1880s, the Japanese navy reported that beriberi had been eradicated among its sailors as a result do adding extra meat, fish and vegetables to their regular diet.

In 1918 Casimir Funk demonstrated that beriberi like symptoms induced in pigeon could be cured by feeding them with rice that was supplemented with a concentrated made from rice polishings.

In 1873, a Dutch naval surgeon, Van Leent, noted an alarming 70 percent rate of beriberi among Javanese sailors servings in the Ditch Eats Indies fleet, whereas among the European sailors it was less than 1 percent.

Christiaan Eijkman received Nobel Prize in 1929 when he induced beriberi-like polyneuritis gallinarum in fowl in Batavia by feeding them a diet of polished rice.
History of Beriberi