Christiaan Eijkman (1858)

While seeking a bacterial cause for the nutritional disorder beriberi, Eijkman, a Dutch pathologist, noticed a resemblance between a nerve disorder in his laboratory chickens and the symptoms of beriberi. He traced the chickens’ disorder to a change in their feed—it had been switched from brown to white rice—and surmised that white rice lacked a dietary component found in brown rice. This eventually led to the discovery of vitamins and earned him a 1929 Nobel Prize, which he shared with whom? Discuss

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *