Reprinted from University Medical Magazine, May, 1896. 
A POSSIBLE SPECIFIC FOR BERIBERI. 
Dr. Carreau, of Guadeloupe (in a contribution au traitement 
de la lepre, Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe, 1892), mentions the case of a 
Brazilian leper, bitten by a rattlesnake. The man succumbed after 
twenty-four hours. It was observed when he was dead that all his 
lepromas were enfeebled. Dr. Carreau, attributing this effect to the 
methemoglobinemia produced by the venom, tried to imitate the 
intoxication in the case of a very sick leper. He gave him enormous 
doses of chlorate of potassium, a salt which increases rapidly the quan- 
tity of hemoglobin of the blood, and may cause death by this same 
action. The patient swallowed forty-five grammes of this remedy in 
three doses, the highest being twenty grammes, in sixty hours. He 
presented the most pronounced symptoms of intoxication; his blood 
showed the spectroscopic bands of hemoglobin and methemoglobin. 
During some days he hovered between life and death. He recovered, 
however, from the shock, and felt a very distinct improvement in all 
the cutaneous surface attacked ; the leonine face smoothed down, the 
skin which had lost all elasticity could again form folds. The treat- 
ment continued eight days. 
I suggest that a remedy which has such an effect—that is, to 
increase rapidly the hemoglobin of the blood—may also be applied to 
the treatment of beriberi, a disease whose principal characteristic is 
the diminution of the hemoglobin. 
Albert S. Ashmead, M.D. 
Norristown, Pa.