From 1600 to 1920, one of the most common causes of death in North America was beriberi. Most people don't even know what it is because it is extremely rare today, but the detective work to find the cause and cure spanned many centuries and countries.
Beriberi is a disease in which people first lose feeling in their fingers and feet followed by progressive weakness, heart failure and death. The people in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) called it beri, the Singhalese word for weakness and it later became known in European circles as beriberi, which means weakness-weakness. In 1850, doctors in England reported that beriberi was extremely common in rich Asians and very rare in Asians who were very poor, but it wasn't until forty years later that the first reports came out asking if beriberi could be caused by a nutritional deficiency that occurred in the rich and not in the poor. The only nutrient that poor Asians got that the rich didn't get was in rice husks. The rich ate vast amounts of soft tasty white rice, while the poor couldn't afford the refined rice so they had to eat the disgusting brown rice.
In the early 1800s, Japanese doctors noted that almost all their sailors came down with beriberi. In 1887, a Japanese doctor named Takaki reported that he cured beriberi by serving the sailors powdered milk and meat. The major breakthrough came when the Dutch physician, Eijkman, reported that he cured beriberi by feeding people rice husks that are thrown away be the very rich who were the only ones who could afford to throw away food. In 1912 Casimir Funk, a Polish biochemist, prepared crude extracts of rice husks that cured beriberi. All these clues and it still took hundreds of years for doctors to find the cause and cure for a very common disease. In 1934 Robert Williams of the University of Texas prepared thiamine (vitamin B1) powder in large quantities. Nobody in North American hears of beriberi any more, because all refined flours now have thiamine added back after it is removed in the milling process.
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Dr. Gabe Mirkin has been a radio talk show host for 25 years and practicing physician for more than 40 years; he is board certified in four specialties, including sports medicine. Read or listen to hundreds of his fitness and health reports at http://www.DrMirkin.com
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