Title List                          Next Title

Beri-beri

Beri-beri

Tulp, Nicolaas. Observationes Medicae. Leyden: George Wishoff, 1739.

"The first clinical descriptions of beriberi were by Dutch physicians, Bontius (1642) and Nicolaas Tulp (1652). Tulp treated a young Dutchman who was brought back to Holland from the East Indies suffering from what the natives of the Indies called beriberi or "the lameness." Tulp's description of beriberi was a detailed one, but he had no clues that it was a deitary deficiency disease. This discovery came more than two hundred years later. Nicholaas Tulp (1593-1674) is best remembered as the central figure in Rembrandt's famous painting, "The Anatomy Lesson" (1632).

Title List                          Next Title