Word: beriberi
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...people had no money. All they owned was fishing equipment. All they ate was cod, bread, tea, wild berries. They were plagued with tuberculosis, scurvy, anemia, beriberi. They had never seen a doctor, and they treated their sick with charms: sugar blown into babies' eyes to cure them of ophthalmia, haddock fin bones to ward off rheumatism, burned nail parings to drive away sea boils. A scratch with a fish hook often meant infection and the loss of a limb...
...Vitamin B1 (thiamin): for beriberi, anorexia, certain heart disturbances, inadequate lactation, nerve diseases of alcoholism, facial neuralgia, cirrhosis of the liver, sciatica...
...given food eaten by natives of southern India, who are puny and disease-ridden. Their menu, cereal grains and vegetable fats, no milk, butter or fresh vegetables. Not only were these rats stricken with well-known deficiency diseases such as pernicious anemia (lack of iron), goiter (lack of iodine), beriberi (lack of vitamin B), but they also developed pneumonia, pleurisy, deafness, adenoids, eye ulcers, kidney stones, gastric ulcers, heart disease, skin infections...
Since dogs deprived of vitamins C, D and G develop scurvy, rickets and pellagra just like human beings, Dr. Patton believed that he had discovered the canine equivalent of beriberi (vitamin B1 deficiency disease). To test his belief he took 13 healthy puppies from his own kennels, fed them nothing but water and heavy dog food mixed with all the vitamins but B1. Within a week the dogs shunned the food, lost weight. They avoided light, trembled and cringed when patted, climbed walls, fell backward, howled constantly. When offered food, they fell forward into their pans...
...Canine beriberi, concluded Dr. Patton, first developed in the U. S. "during the years immediately following the War . . . when scraps suitable for dog food largely disappeared from the . . . dining-room table, and urban dog owners turned to commercial foods for the sustenance of their pets. ..." If owners do not feed their dogs meat, said Dr. Patton, to avoid fits they should make sure that the commercial food they use contains vitamin...