Thiamine, or vitamin B1, was the 1st vitamin to be uncovered. Traditionally, brown or multi grain rice was a basic foods in numerous Oriental countries. The oils contained in the germ of whole grain rice or wheat can go rancid quite quickly, especially when exposed to air ( as when compressed into flour ) and stored at 70 degrees. So whole grains have an a little limited shelf life ( which can sometimes be extended by sealing them in an airproof container and refrigerating them ).
So, to attempt to increase the shelf-life of rice, in the 1800s, the Germans perfected rice milling machines which stripped the bran and germ from rice yielding white rice. Advertising of that era convinced folks who could afford it this new white rice was an improved food to be wanted. This also was an age of conquest for Western european peoples and while Western european colonists in Asian areas adopted the rice-eating habits of the native peoples, they decided to eat socially-acceptable, dear, white rice instead of the inexpensive brown rice consumed by the local poor people. Interestingly , these white settlers and navy personel in the Orient often came down with a disease called beriberi that the poor folks did not get. All sorts of fascinating explanations for this were proposed, but pretty much all had in common the idea beriberi was caused by a bacterium. This was during the height of Louis Pasteur’s famous work on bacteria, so all kinds of illnesses were all of a sudden being ascribed to bacterial causes, including beriberi. Symptoms of beriberi, many of which are neurological, include fatigue, irritation, poor memory, sleep problems, anorexia, intestinal discomfort and constipation, nerve Problems like burning sensations in the feet, calf muscle cramps and weakness, and other symptoms.
Vitamin Shoppes Because folk thought that beriberi was due to a bacterium, this illness was considered to be transmissive, and folks who contracted it were insulated from well people. There had been much research being conducted to try and find the pathogen people thought caused the disease and therefore, a treatment for the disease.
Vitamin Shoppes In the 1890s there was an epidemic of beriberi among the Dutch colonists in Java ( yes, there really is a country by that name ). Deep in the jungles of Java, the Dutch had established a hospital and research lab for beriberi patients. The doctor who ran this facility was Dr. Christian Eijkman. For other research that was being conducted, the lab also kept a flock of normal, healthy chickens. At 1 time when supplies were low, the staff ran out of the inexpensive, brown rice the chickens were eating, and reluctantly made a decision to splurge and feed the good white rice to the chickens until they could get more of the brown rice. This situation apparently lasted for some time, and the staff started to notice the chickens were showing symptoms like the symptoms of the beriberi patients, to the great trouble of all who considered this to be a highly transmissive disease. At last someone discovered that the good white rice was being wasted on the chickens, and the order was passed along to get them back onto inexpensive brown rice. To the amazement of all, when returned to a diet composed of brown rice, the chickens got better. Based on this proof, Dr. Eijkman proposed that beriberi was a nutritional deficiency, not caused by a micro-organism, and that something in the rice bran prevents beriberi.
People were so certain that beriberi needed to be caused by a bacterium that they wouldn’t accept Eijkman’s conjecture, and he was relieved of his commitments and sent back home.
Vitamin Shoppes In 1911, Casimir Funk, a Polish analyst working in London, isolated and concentrated a substance from rice polish ( bran ) which cured beriberi in a pigeon. Funk determined that chemically, this substance belonged to the class of organic molecules known as amines amd it was vital to a healthy life, so he called it a vitamine. This chemical was subsequently named thiamine. We now recognize a number of vitamins ( note that the e had been dropped ), the majority of which are not amines. .
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