Beriberi, vitamin B1 and world food policy, 1925-1970.

Beriberi has long been recognized as being of special significance among the avitaminoses. It was not the first disease to be associated with a specific nutritional deficiency, but the researches of Christian Eijkman into polyneuritis in the early years of this century, and Casimir Funk's apparent isolation of an anti-beriberi factor in 1911, led to the discovery and identification of vitamins and to important developments in the science and practice of nutrition.' Vitamin B 1, or thiamine, was first isolated from rice polishings by the Dutch research workers W F Donath and B C P Jansen in 1926, and was first synthesized ten years later by the American Robert R Williams and his coworkers. Those involved in this research were impressed by its signifiance: for Jansen, the beriberi research generated the modem science of nutrition; for Williams it paved the way for the elimination of a disease that had brought suffering and death to millions.2 During the 1920s, commercial companies had developed techniques for adding vitamins to processed foods, a process known as fortification,3 and following the synthesis of thiamine, Williams became convinced that the eradication of beriberi might be achieved by the distribution of thiamine-enriched rice in countries where the disease was endemic. The path from Funk's insight to the implementing of rice enrichment programmes was far from smooth, however, either scientifically or administratively. Between 1911 and 1933, scientists struggled to elucidate the anti-beriberi vitamin, while the question of whether to encourage the enrichment of rice supplies with synthetic thiamine became an issue of importance for the food and health agencies of the United Nations in the decades after World War II. Superficially unrelated, the scientific arena of the 1920s and 1930s, and the administrative policy arena of the 1950s and 1960s were linked by the field observations of two British scientists, W R Aykroyd and B S Platt, whose early work on beriberi carried them to positions of influence in the world of international agencies and global policies which emerged as a principal determinant of change in developing countries after 1945.4 It was Williams's view in later years that Platt and Aykroyd were