Abstract
The occurrence of beriberi in association with an exclusive use of rice as a staple diet in the Louisiana rice producing parishes, far removed from the accepted endemic regions of the disease, is both significant and interesting. Coincident with a recent outbreak in the country district there occurred an outbreak among inmates of the Orleans Parish Prison in whose diet rice played no part whatever, so that comparative studies were possible. Our interest was especially aroused in the latter situation by the fact that the symptoms, palpitation, dyspnea and edema, had led to the tentative diagnosis of heart disease with congestive failure. The cases were therefore all carefully investigated from the cardiac standpoint with the usual clinical methods and electrocardiographic studies. The elucidation of the cause of oriental beriberi is correlated with the development of our knowledge of vitamins. Certainly without the epoch-making work of the Japanese Takaki,1the
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