Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-04-03
CHAPTER 40.


Rice, Secured and Polished, Is Food
Unfit for Hospital or Homc-It Will
Not support Lifc-Robbcd as White
Flour Is Robbed, Rice Is RESPONSE
ble for Many PrcVcntable Diseases.
AS we gather up the shattered frag-
ments of the white bread superstition
that has endured so long unmolested
among the miseries of the denatured
wheat eater, we may catch in fancy
the murmur of spirit voices. Among
| them we can recognize a chorus in
which the million five hundred thou
sand children under ten years of age
who died in the United States during
the past four years are crying:
I'VE, the ghosts of babes, are pa
/ trolling the night, pulling down from
! their high inches in the darkness
death we find.
''YOnder a skinny finger points to a
statue of starch. 1t is the finger of
bloodless fraud. AS we pull the idol
down we see that it is labelled, Pol
ished Rice. "
| Few American have ever eaten rice
as nature intended them to eat it. The
cream color and light brown in hue,
with a flavor that the polished rice
eater has never tasted. has been ban
| ished from the United States for many
years.
/ The robbed substitute is the
brushed. secured polished and some
times talcum coated grain of COM
merce, SO degraded and denatured by
the milling processes through which
1t passes that when fed to the fowls
of the barnyard it brings about their
death in seven weeks.
Fed on the natural unrefined grain,
containing all the elements with
which nature has endowed it, the
creatures of the barnyard thrive in
definitely.
The innocent" bowl of rice, as we
now scour and polish, served to the
growing child and the convalescent
struggling desperately upward out of
an abyss of disease, will not support
human life. We have robbed 1t as
we rob the wheat.
No, this is not the cry of an alarm
ist. Behold the facts.
In the Philippine Islands a disease
called acidosis, or beri-beri, has wiped
away countless thousands.
We have similar diseases in the
United States but we call them in
anition, anemia. neurasthenia, ner-
Vous prostration, general breakdown.
Beri-beri, or acidosis, journeys from
one stage to another through all of
these experiences It's name neither
adds to nor detracts from its ability
To destroy. Those who encounter it
die the death.
DIR. V. G. IIeiser in the year 1910.
then director of health of the Philip
pine Islands; DR.. Fraser of Smga-
pore, Dr. Aaron of the Philippine
Medical School, DR.. Highet of Siam.
and DR.. DelIaan of Java produced
evidence that showed conclusively
that acidosis, or beri-beri is caused by
diet of polished rice, such as is
consumed in the United States. AS
early as 1906 DR.. Donald McCaskey
had noted the raVages which follow
diet of polished rice.
Polished rice does not introduce
some mysterious germs into the body.
1t simply starves the blood and tis-
sues until they no longer offer "A de-
Tense to any germ.
With resistance broken and i'm
munity destroyed, as the result of in
adequate nourishment pathogenic
organisms take up their residence in
the weakened tissues of the body, and
grow and multiply until disorder en-
sues.
During January and February, 1910
another of the many outbreaks of
acidosis among the inmates of the
Coulion Leper Colony aroused the in
terest of the little group of physicians
named above.
The disease resisted all medical
treatment. 1t was noted that the
lepers were striving to maintain life
upon a diet OF polished rice. AS an
experiment the polished rice was dis
continued and the natural grain sub
stituted
The sick in the hospital were fed
with the rice polishings that had
been removed from the refined grain.