A decade later, in 1894, Christiaan Eijkman in Batavia, Indonesia examined workers (prisoners, actually) fed unpolished versus polished rice and reported beriberi only in the latter group. Eijkman, a Dutch-trained physician, was a keen observer of nature and learned about the milling process, which removed the peripaceum or "silver skin" from brown rice. Eijkman's studies were based on a natural experiment in chickens in which the birds became ill on a diet of polished rice and were "cured" when another keeper fed them uncooked, unpolished rice. This is a real example of serendipity.
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