Quoted by Medicus, 'Notes for Novices: Vitamins', Our Dogs 116 (21st July 1939), p. 179.
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'Feeding Dogs on Rice

There are many kennels in the country the occupants of which get a good deal of boiled rice as part of their ration. I was reminded of this fact recently when reading a very interesting book by Dr. James Harpole, entitled "Leaves from a Surgeon's Case-Book" (published by Cassells), in which he describes how vitamin B was discovered in the husk of rice. He says that it was in the island of Java, where a Dutchman (Dr. Eijkman) was in charge of a prison hospital. The prisoners were natives, and they lived almost entirely on rice. In the prison hospital there were always a considerable number of these convicts suffering from a tropical disease called "beri-beri," a disease of which nothing much was known. In this condition patients got severe pains in the legs, wasted away, began to stagger about, got paralysis and died. It occurred in epidemics and naturally everyone thought it was due to a germ, for germs were the only things supposed to produce disease at that time. There was one odd thing, however, about this "beri-beri." Although the prisoners appeared to get it from one another, none of the doctors or warders ever caught it. Then one day Dr. Eijkman noticed that most of the hens in the hospital compound were behaving in a peculiar way - flopping about, becoming paralysed, and dying just like the patients. Naturally he thought they must have caught the disease from the patients: and that made it all the more odd that neither he nor any of his assistants ever contracted it. A few days later all the hens that had survived were well again, and indeed some that had appeared to be on the point of death miraculously recovered. Wondering whether they had been poisoned, he looked into their food, and found that owing to a shortage they had been given polished rice used by the hospital patients, but that on the day all the sick ones recovered they had been put again on their old ration of whole unmilled rice. This gave the clue to the trouble among the coolies, and they were at once put on their old ration again.

Then, to make sure he was on the right track, Dr. Eijkman started to feed the poultry again on boiled rice - that is, rice from which the husk had been milled off (white rice), and the hens got paralysis again. When they became paralysed on polished rice he gave them water containing an extract from the husks, they recovered. The ultimate result was that news soon spread among plantation owners in the Far East that coolies living on an exclusive diet of polished rice were liable to get "beri-beri," but that if you gave them the cheap, old-fashioned, unmilled rice they did not.

Vitamins A and D

The two vitamins of greatest importance to dog owners are A and D , and in regard to both of these Dr. Harpole has some very interesting things to recall. He tells how that, during the Great War, the farmers of Denmark sold all the butter they could to the Germans because they got such high prices for it. As a consequence, they ran short themselves, and fed their children on skimmed milk, and margarine, and oatmeal, and things like that. Then came an epidemic of ulcerated eyes in children, and they had to prohibit the export of butter. They did not know that the reason for this affliction of children was that they had been deprived of the vitamin A, which had gone with the butter. Vitamin A is present in cream, in eggs, and in certain vegetables (carrots, for example, hence the recommendation to use scraped raw carrot in puppy feeding). Then it exists in cod-liver oil and other fish livers - also in animal livers. Dr, Harpole points out that when a lion kills its prey the first thing it does is to eat its liver and heart, from which it gets vitamins A and D. This is done by instinct of course.

Vitamin D is the preventative of rickets, and its discovery and the developments following its discovery have revolutionised medical and veterinary science where rickets is concerned. Dr. Harpole tells how that [sic] in 1914 half the children in Glasgow had rickets, and it was not until 1922 that as a result of various happenings the nature and whereabouts of vitamin D was discovered. It was known that puppies in the Zoo kept in dark kennels got rickets, whilst those allowed to romp about in the sunlight did not. Therefore it was argued that sunlight and air prevented rickets. For years it was impossible to rear lion cubs at the London Zoo; they all died of severe rickets, and sunlight did not stop this. In the Dublin Zoo on the other hand, where they were bred in darkness, they lived and grew all right, only in the Dublin Zoo they were given milk, cod-liver oil, and pounded bones in addition to raw meat. When this diet was tried eventually at London Zoo, forthwith the cubs grew firm, straight-limbed, big-chested , and survived; and all this in the old dark dens where previously rickets had reigned supreme. Therefore it was argued that rickets was due to a defective diet, and not to the absence of sunlight and air. We are told that in Glasgow the experiment was tried of giving lime-water to children to make up the deficiency of lime in their bones, but that it was a failure. It made no difference. Let this be a warning to dog-owners, so many of whom think lime-water prevents rickets. I have again and again myself pointed out and explained in these "Notes" the fallacy of that idea, it is too technical to deal with here, however.'

Concerning Vitamin C

I must not omit to mention vitamin C. This is the vitamin which made all the difference to the health of seafaring men when the use of green vegetables and lemon juice was introduced by Captain Cook - though he did not know the scientific explanation why those vegetable additions to the food of his men kept them from the scurvy which up until that time had been the sailor's curse. Dr. Harpole recalls the fact that expeditions to the Arctic regions failed miserably until recent times because of scurvy, and that whole townships of hardy fisher-folk in Labrador and Norway were riddled with sickness and death because they knew nothing of vitamin C as the antidote to scurvy.'