Without Taking Any Medicine, But Simply By The Changed Habits Of Life, With A Variety Of Good Food, The Symptoms Soon Disappeared.

It is undoubtedly true that the use of polished rice is a cause of beri-beri, because the Dayaks, with their primitive methods of husking, never suffer from this disease, although rice is their staple food.

Only on occasions when members of these tribes take part in expeditions to New Guinea, or are confined in prisons, and eat the rice offered of civilization, are they afflicted with this malady. In my own case I am inclined to think that my indisposition at the commencement of my travels in Borneo was largely due to the use of oatmeal from which the husks had been removed. Rolled oats is the proper food.

Modern research has established beyond doubt, that the outer layers of grains contain mineral salts and vitamines that are indispensable to human life. Facts prove that man, if confined to an exclusive diet of white bread, ultimately dies from malnutrition. Cereals which have been "refined" of their husks present a highly starchy food, and unless they are properly balanced by base-forming substances, trouble is sure to follow. Scurvy, beri-beri, and acidosis have been fatal to many expeditions, though these diseases no doubt can be avoided by a judicious selection of provisions that insure acid and base forming nutrition in the right proportion. [*]

[Footnote *: For an illuminating example of poorly balanced food, see Physical Culture Magazine, New York, for August, 1918, in which Mr. Alfred W. McCann describes the disaster to the Madeira-Mamore Railway Company in Brazil, when "four thousand men were literally starved to death on a white bread diet." In the July number may be found the same food expert's interesting manner of curing the crew of the German raider Kronprinz Wilhelm, which in April, 1915, put in at Newport News, in Virginia, with over a hundred men seriously stricken with acidosis.

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