Pamphlets on Biology Volume 2517; Kofoid Collection (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 Excerpt: ...of Orientals here, having no relation whatever to beri-beri. Observation No. 5. 507. Chinese tin miners contract beri-beri in larger numbers than any other class of the community. Their gardeners top-dress growing vegetables with human faeces collected chiefly from the mines where beri-beri may be epidemic or endemic. The faeces and urine are mixed with water, exposed to the atmosphere, undergo decomposition, are thinned by a further addition of water and then sprinkled over the young growing vegetables. 508. It seemed possible in view of the gastric and duodenal inflammation to be observed in all acute-pernicious and fatal acute cases of beri-beri that this mixture contained either a germ or its toxin which, being deposited on the vegetables and ingested with them, caused beri-beri. 509. To determine this point four litres of the mixture were collected from gardeners in the neighbourhood of the Pudoh and Ampang mines near Kwala Lumpor (Map E. 3), thinned with sterilised distilled water and then filtered through a Pasteur-chambkri.and porous candle into sterilised flasks. 51o. The product, a brownish evil-smelling fluid was mixed in small quantities with mashed banana and fed to three monkeys. The mixture was refused at first and the animals had to be forcibly fed. But by diminishing the quantity to a few c.c. and starving the monkeys for several days they were induced to take the mixture for a period of eighteen days. Two monkeys ingested over a litre each of the concoction without then or subsequently showing signs of disease. They grew thin and their oats roughened, but beyond this nothing was noticeable. At the end of eighteen days the monkeys were killed. No congestion of the intestinal mucosa was to be observed and the vagal cardiac and other ne...