Initial investigations in 1936 showed that many young apprentices were not only not kept well, but were the victims of dietary deficiency diseases such as beri-beri, as definite in their effects as the diseases of bacillary origin.
The clinical findings of Dr. B. 5. Platt over some years in respect of this range of disease indicated that a large proportion of the patients seeking the assistance of the special research ward in the hospital were apprentices and others of the artisan class. Accordingly a survey was made of many shops employing apprentices, with startling results. Signs of dietary deficiency were widespread. It was therefore decided that the Industrial' Section would collaborate with the Lester Institute in securing the ce-operation of factory owners and in the operation of a small diet kitchen, in which apprentices would be fed at no greater cost than their masters were accustomed to pay, with the object of demonstrating whether it was possible to eliminate beri-beri not only in any of its minor mani-testations, but certainly in its grosser forms which are so frequently fatal. Actual food supplied and those overhead costs comparable with those of the supplier of factory food showed that the boys were fed at an average cost of $4.80 per boy per month.
For more than six months, including six weeks of summer weather, it was recorded that there was no sign of beri-beri in any of the 75 boys being ied. Boys in neighbouring factories were found to be suffering from deficiency diseases, and considering that in 1936 many boys had to be taken to hospital out èf the factories whose workers were fed in the kitchen in 3937, this outcome is most satisfactory. The basis of the experiment is the fact that the country habit of storing rice in the husk, and dehusking only that portion which is necessary for the food of the family for the day, no longer holds for city We. Rice is dehusked in the country and transported unhusked to the city, to save haulage costs. In consequence the fats present in the "Silver skin"
the rice become rancid, and in order to make the rice palatable, it must be washed. With the washing disappear the essential vitamin contents which act as deterrents to dietary deficiency disease. The experiment was designed to prove that, if rice were stored in the husk, and freshly dehusked immediately prior to use, it became unnecessary to wash
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.