Beriberi is a deficiency disease which is caused by the absence of vitamin B1 in our diet. It is a serious disease.
The disease was accurately described for the first time in 1629 by the Leiden physician Jacobs de Bondt.
He noted that the word ‘beriberi’ was derived from a local word for sheep because of the tottering walk of those affected disease.
Beriberi is characterized by degenerative changes in the nervous system which cause pain, weakness and paralysis of the limbs, by edema and by hypertrophy of the heart which causes shortness of breath and other cardiac symptoms and frequently ends in heart failure and death.
Vitamin B1 or thiamine also known as anti-beriberi or antineuritic factor. Beriberi is common in those area where polished rice is eaten.
Beriberi Disease