We may hope that research is at last coining near the secret of the origin o? beri-beri. It is known to our readers that Capt. E. D. W. Greig, I.MS., a very able investigator, is on special duty in Calcutta, inquiring into the origin and nature of the beri-beri or epidemic dropsy which has been prevalent for several years past in that city and in many other parts of Bengal. The question of the ...

The symptoms, pathology, course and complications of such deficiency diseases as pellagra, beriberi, and scurvy are well defined, even if the final details of their aetiologies have not been decided. But these are conditions which are familiar to many medical men who work among the indigent classes of the tropics and to which they refer by such indefinite terms as marasmus, malnutrition, defici...

face and neck. The bowels are affected from the beginning with dysentery ; or if not, these are prone to its attack on the slightest irritation, such as is caused by a mild dose of castor oil. The lungs are also affected in some, and moist crepitation is the usual stethoscopic indication. In one person hemorrhagic dysentery and swelling of the legs and feet commenced simultaneously from the beg...

Elsewhere* I have described the kinds of diet used by different race3 and creeds. The object I had in view was to elicit that diet, faulty in some way, had been a principal predisposing cause of beri-beri, whether or not the exciting cause I have named is the true one, and that its geographical range is not defined within certain parallels of latitude and longitude, but that anasarcous disease ...