Nutrition History (from Parts Unknown)

This is the story of beriberi. For more than 1500 years, beriberi was known as poison wind affliction, a sickness produced by chronic exposure to damp winds. In reality, beriberi is caused by the absence of a vital nutrient in the diet (vitamin B1) the human body requires in amounts less than one thousandth of a gram per day— the same amount that could fill a standard vitamin capsule 500 times. It would take decades of gruelling and relentless front-line work to establish the connection of the beriberi and the diet—work pioneered by physicians and medical thinkers who bucked the rigid medical dogma of their time. The story of beriberi, from its first description through the discovery and synthesis of vitamin B1, plays out in the context of Japan's transformation from a premodern feudal society into an industrialized nation.