Cornelis A. Pekelharing was a Dutch professor of medicine at Utrecht University — described by Brooshooft in 1886 as “een onzer beste bacteriologen” (one of our best bacteriologists) — who was sent out to the Indies by the Dutch government, together with his assistant Dr. Winkler, to investigate the causes of beri-beri, the disease which was by then devastating the Indies army garrison in Atjeh.
The Beri-beri Crisis in Atjeh
By 1886, according to Brooshooft’s closing chapter, beri-beri had become one of the most serious problems facing the Atjeh garrison. Official reports recorded that from 1879 to 1883 an average of 3,544 beri-beri patients had been treated per year, and according to May reports cited by Brooshooft no fewer than 8,000 men in the Indies army were suffering from the disease at one time. Symptoms were: swelling of the legs and feet; loss of skin elasticity so that a finger-pressure left lasting pits; shortness of breath; paralysis; sometimes rapid death, sometimes death only after weeks or months; and in all cases great prostration, from which sufferers either never recovered or only after a long period. The cause was still largely unknown; some researchers believed it to be an infectious disease caused by a poisonous fungus taken up into the blood that multiplied and eventually paralysed the nervous system and heart.
Pekelharing’s Mission
Because of the importance of the problem, and after preliminary investigations by meritorious medical officers at Atjeh (including the Japanese doctor at Kota Radja), the government commissioned Pekelharing of Utrecht University to go to the Indies with Dr. C. Winkler as his assistant to track down the causes of the disease and, if possible, propose counter-measures. Brooshooft, writing in December 1886, recorded that in the meantime it had been established that great fatigue, poor diet, marshy exhalations and similar conditions promoted the disease, and that some reforms had already been made: the soldier’s diet had, among other things, been made more substantial in October of that year and was now adequate in all respects. He expressed the hope that science and improved conditions would soon bring a change for the better.
Legacy
Pekelharing and Winkler’s mission to the Indies formed part of the chain of late-nineteenth-century bacteriological and nutritional investigations into beri-beri, which ultimately led to the identification of vitamin B1 (thiamine) deficiency as the cause by Christiaan Eijkman and Gerrit Grijns in the 1890s.
See Also
- Beri-beri epidemic in the Atjeh garrison
- Winkler
- Royal Netherlands Indies Army
- Atjeh War
- Kota Radja
- Utrecht
- 1886
- 1879
Source
Brooshooft, Mr. P. Geschiedenis van den Atjeh-oorlog 1873–1886. Utrecht: F. B. van Ditmar, 1886, Hoofdstuk X, pp. 278–279 (pp. 296–297 of the OCR).