I have attempted in this paper tc prove, that
Beri-Beri is closely associated with the consumption
of rice.
Not rice generally but limited to certain distinct qualities of rice and to the class of native who
consumes that quality of rice. I have traced with
great, - and I am afraid tiresome, - detail, this rice,
from the Beri-Beri patient, through the mill, to its
original padi;- in order to show what forms of padi I
consider implicated. Other investigators on BeriBeri, in my own opinion, do not seem to recognize the
the many varying qualities of rice in the market, nor
of padi grown. In their analysis they do not state
where the rice is grown, but simply give it the
commercial ftame by which it is known in the place where
they work. It is necessary in order for their work
to be of the greatest service that these details should
be filled in.
By experiments I have further tried to prove that
Beri-Beri is not infectious and that it is limited to
these certain qualities of rice.
By analysis I have tried to show that the phosphorus contents are not a correct nor certain indicator
of the Beri-Beri producing power of rice and that we
must look to some other agent apart from phosphorus
starvation.
Siam derives a very large part of her revenue from
the duty on export rice. If Siam rices are collectively blamed as the cause of Beri-Beri it will be a very
serious thing for the finances of that country.
The larger part of her export rice is certainly of a
poor quality, but is sold at a price that accords with
the low wages earned by the working classes in the
East. In these experiments I have tried to prove that
all Siamese rices cannot thus be indiscriminately condemned. Eliminate the steam-milled rice;prepared from
padi,grown on the poor soils by the method of scattering the seed on unirrigated soil,by uncar9ful husbandmen; who sow a larger crop of inferior seed,than th9y
can possibly hope to reap with due care at the proper
time when the grain is ripe; then Beri-Beri will no
longer be seen in Siam.
The padi cultivator is a poor man who lives from hand to mouth. He is a gambler by heredity and disposition and is always in debt, so much so that he has
usually pawned his next year’s crop to the rice miller.
King Chulalongkorn, the late King of Siam, in the
latter years of his reign,tried his best to do away
with gambling in his country; and, as the laws on gamblin
become more and more stringent, the cultivator will
find he has more money to spend on his farm, and so I
hope, will only spend his efforts in cultivating the
best qualities of padi.- Nearly all the rice mills
in Bangkok are owned by Chinese who hav9 no interest in
the country apart from the money they can make out of
it. Their chief efforts being to make money as quick
as possible, so that they may return to China. It is
the smaller rice mills in Bangkok, run on small capital,
which cannot, afford to pay big prices for good padi,
that encourage the cultivation of the lower qualities
of padi. If legislation in Siam and other countries
will prohibit the sale of low quality rice prepared
from low quality padi, only this class of miller would
suffer; and I have little or no sympathy for him, for I
think his extinction would be to the advantage of the
world at large,and that epidemic Beri-Beri would then be eliminated. In Burma and Anam,conditions identical
with the above are present and I include these
countries in my criticism.
