The Phosphoric Oxide Content of Maize Flour

Extract

In 1909, in a paper published from the Federated Malay States Institute for Medical Research, Fraser and Stanton in discussing the etiology of beri-beri found that polyneuritis could be produced in fowls by a diet of polished white rice and that the fowls remained healthy if, in addition to the polished rice, they received a sufficient quantity of rice polishings or a quantity of an alcoholic extract (evaporated at a temperature of 52° C.) of whole rice. They established the fact that the essential cause of beri-beri was to be sought for in a nutritive defect, and they endeavoured to determine by chemical methods precise differences between rices capable of causing polyneuritis in fowls and rices which did not cause the disease. Their experiments had shown conclusively that highly polished rice gave rise to the disease but whole rice did not and that the disease could be cured by adding rice polishings to the diet. The chemical examination showed that, whereas whole rice contains about 0·469 per cent, of phosphoric oxide, polished white rice contains only about 0·277 per cent, and the polishings contain about 4·2 per cent.