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Updated: June 12, 2025
At this station Colonel Rondon received news of sickness and of some deaths among the employees of the commission in the country to the westward, which we were soon to enter. Beriberi and malignant malarial fever were the diseases which claimed the major number of the victims. Surely these are "the men who do the work for which they draw the wage."
The refining of rice by removing the coating, which contains organic salts, is another process by which is produced a food that is almost pure starch. The disease beriberi is now recognized as being due to a diet of polished rice. Where the natural unpolished rice is used this disease is both prevented and cured. In refining our sugar a similar denaturing process 'is carried on.
In the mean time he asked me all sorts of questions about myself and all my relatives, whether we had been subject to this and that malady, until I felt as if we must some of us have had more or less of them, and could not feel quite sure whether Elephantiasis and Beriberi and Progressive Locomotor Ataxy did not run in the family.
"I can't tell you how worried I am," he murmured, almost to himself. "What can this thing be?" He turned to us, and, although he had just been introduced, I am sure that our presence seemed to surprise him, for he went on talking to himself, "Oh yes let me see oh yes, friends of Doctor er Leslie." I had been studying him and trying to recall what I had just read of beriberi and polyneuritis.
It was extraordinary to realize that here about the eleventh degree we were on such a big river, utterly unknown to the cartographers and not indicated by even a hint on any map. We named this big tributary Rio Cardozo, after a gallant officer of the commission who had died of beriberi just as our expedition began.
At Caceres he received notice of the death of one of his gallant subordinates, Captain Cardozo. He died from beriberi, far out in the wilderness along our proposed line of march. Colonel Rondon also received news that a boat ascending the Gy- Parana, to carry provisions to meet those of our party who were to descend that stream, had been upset, the provisions lost, and three men drowned.
In other words, taken altogether I should almost say there was evidence that a concerted effort was being made to affect the food a result analogous to that of using polished rice as a staple diet and producing beriberi, or, perhaps more accurately, polyneuritis. I can be sure of nothing yet, but it's worth following up." "Then you think Kato " "Not too fast," cautioned Craig.
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