This view is supported by the fact that in recent years a disease of infants similar to scurvy, and called "infantile scurvy," has been described by Sir Thomas Barlow, and fully recognized. It is a condition of "malnutrition," and is accompanied by "rickets," and is due in the first place to failure of the mother's milk, and secondly to the bad quality of the cows' milk substituted for it. Owing to the danger of infection by bovine tubercle-bacillus and the great expense of "certified" milk from specially selected cows (eightpence a quart), it is customary to boil the milk given to children. There seems to be no doubt that good milk, freshly boiled, is satisfactory. But the constant use of sterilized milk and so-called Pasteurized milk, as well as inferior "watered" and more or less stale milk, is frequently the cause of infantile scurvy. Something is destroyed in the milk by prolonged heating which is necessary for its proper action as a food. The addition to the milk of a small quantity of fresh meat-juice or beetroot-juice appears to replace this destroyed matter, and to prevent malnutrition and scurvy. And thus the babies are rescued from "infantile scurvy." Here, again, it is a question of the presence of a minimal quantity of an easily destroyed proteid, which is necessary to start the nutritional process and to keep it going.
A very interesting case of the unsuspected influence of minute quantities of such a "proteid" body (that is, a body like casein and albumen, but higher in the complexity of its chemical structure and nearer to the readily destroyed chemical complexity of living matter itself) has lately been discovered. In the East, especially amongst Chinese "coolies" and other people who feed on rice, a very troublesome disease is known, called "Berri-berri." It is chiefly marked by pains all over the body, lassitude, and debility, and renders its victims unfit for labour, and so causes great inconvenience to employers of "Chinese cheap labour." All sorts of causes have been suggested for it. But it has now been found that it is due to the feeding of the coolies with "polished rice." This is an inferior rice, the grains of which have become (by bad, damp storage) rough and powdery on the surface. The bad rice grain is purchased by dealers and shaken up and sifted so as to get rid of this dull surface, and is then known as "polished rice." The grain has lost its outer coat. It has been found that domesticated birds (pigeons and fowls) fed on this polished rice become ill with symptoms like those of "Berri-berri," and even die. And it has been further discovered that these same birds can be cured by mixing some of the separated outer coat of sound rice grains with the "polished rice." The result of this observation on birds has been applied to human patients suffering from "Berri-berri." It is found that they are rapidly cured by giving them rice "outsides" to eat, and that those who are feeding on "polished rice" can be prevented from acquiring the disease "Berri-berri" by mixing rice "outsides" with the polished rice. The study of the subject has gone further.