Word: beriberi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Thiamin (formerly vitamin BI), preventive of beriberi, neuritis and loss of appetite, was formerly extracted from rice polishings, once cost $300 a gram. It now costs 37? a gram. Made by the ton, it goes chiefly into enriched white flour, to restore what is lost from the whole wheat in milling...
...Food was the worst problem. From the first we never had enough. Beriberi . . . spread like wildfire...
...result has been slow starvation for the 45,000 natives of the colony, its 3,000 soldiers, 150 white women and children. And with starvation, inevitably, has come disease: beriberi and scurvy. Still the officials in Djibouti have refused to yield, to admit the Free French doctors who are waiting just across the Ethiopian border with food, medicine and wine. Last week they again turned down an offer to evacuate civilians from Djibouti...
This means that the old slogans, "A for eye troubles, B for beriberi, C for scurvy, etc.," are not quite accurate. For specific vitamins do not invariably cure specific diseases; they all work together. Experience has shown that in groups of people deprived of all vitamins for a long period of time, various individuals develop different deficiency diseases. Some do not even have scurvy or pellagra; they develop anemia instead-a disease not ordinarily believed related to vitamin deficiency...
...Nutritional diseases are widespread. "The lack of protein," says Dr. Lim, "is particularly important. . . . Healing of wounds is slow and infections of all kinds are frequent in the undernourished soldier. The lack of fat ... is responsible for the frequency of hemeralopia [blindness under bright lights]." Beriberi, a disease caused by vitamin B deficiency, is common in Southern China, where the main food is polished rice...