Years were spent in investigation before it was found out that beriberi, a disease of the Orient, could be cured and prevented by the addition, to the diet, of certain nutritive elements in the covering of the rice, that are ordinarily removed in the polishing process, and thrown away. Just what these nutritive elements were, was not understood; but the fact remained that a diet of polished rice resulted in symptoms of beriberi, while a diet of the unpolished grain was sufficient to prevent any manifestations of the disease. In Java, where the people lived largely on whole rice, beriberi was unknown. For years, the fact had been recognized, that sailors living on canned and preserved foods sooner or later developed scurvy, which could be quickly cured by an addition of fresh vegetables or the juice of fruits, especially lemons and oranges, to the diet. In 1535, when all but three of Cartier's one hundred ten sailors had scurvy, he cured them all by giving them a decoction of fresh pine needles. Babies fed on Pasteurized milk often develop infantile scurvy. _Convincing Experiments_ Vitamines are made only in nature's laboratory. The body cannot make them, therefore mother's milk is deficient in vitamine if her diet is. This is demonstrated in a decided way in the Philippine Islands, where the diet is deficient in the vitamine preventing beriberi. Among the Filipinos, one half the deaths take place before the end of the first year of age; and in these infants, one half the deaths are due to beriberi. Pellagra, a disease of obscure ætiology, or cause, manifests itself principally among a class of people who live on a monotonous diet of corn bread, bacon, soda biscuit, and sirup. Some authorities are quite convinced that it is a "deficiency" disease. Also rickets, eczema, pyorrhea, and a number of other diseases of obscure cause are beginning to be regarded as being, in part at least, deficiency diseases. A predisposition to tuberculosis and other infections may be of similar cause. There are probably a number, possibly many, of these vitamine substances. At least two have been quite fully demonstrated,--the one preventing scurvy, and the one preventing beriberi.