In the late 1800s, beriberi was studied by Takaki Kanehiro, a British-trained Japanese medical doctor of the Japanese Navy.
beriberi |
It was first mapped by the British Graham Land Expedition under John Rymill 1934-37, and was named by the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee in 1959 for Christiaan Eijkman, a Dutch biologist who in 1890–97 first produced experimental beriberi and initiated work on its prevention.
In this hospital in 1896, Eijkman discovered the cause of beriberi, a disease of the peripheral nerves, which won him a Nobel Prize for Medicine.
It may occur in situations with an increased blood volume, from excess of water and salt (renal pathology, excess of fluid or blood administration, treatment with retaining water steroids), chronic and severe anemia, large arteriovenous fistula or multiple small arteriovenous shunts as in Paget's disease of bone, some forms of severe hepatic or renal disorders, hyperthyroidism, beriberi.
The higher echelons of the Army Medical Corps, including writer Mori Ōgai, favored the German view that beriberi, a disease that caused an even heavier death toll than typhoid, was caused by an undiscovered transmittable pathogens (in contrast, British-trained doctors in the navy correctly saw it as a nutritional disorder).
Takaki's success occurred ten years before Christiaan Eijkman, working in Batavia, advanced his theory that beriberi was caused by a nutritional deficiency, with his later identification of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine).
Named by the United Kingdom Antarctic Place-Names Committee (UK-APC) in 1959 after Baron Takaki Kanehiro (1849–1920), Director-General of the Medical Department of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the first man to prevent beriberi empirically by dietary additions, in 1882.