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Stephenson:Neal:Cryptonomicon:410:beriberi. It is the scourge of the Nipponese...(Alan Sinder)

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For good reason Yamamoto is a buzz word among the Secret Admirers* In WWII — some of the enemy were too smart for their own good ...      “... Yamamoto's feet hurt like hell. Like everyone else within a thousand miles, he has a tropical disease; in his case, beriberi. It is the scourge of the Nipponese and especially of the Navy, because they eat too much polished rice, not enough fish and vegetables. His long nerves have been corroded by lactic acid, so his hands quiver. His failing heart can't shove fluid through his extremities, so his feet swell. He needs to change his shoes several times a day, but he doesn't have room here; he is encumbered not only by the curvature of the plane's greenhouse, but also by his sword.”      They are approaching the Imperial Navy airbase at Bougainville, right on schedule, at 9:35. A shadow passes overhead and Yamamoto glances up to see the silhouette of an escort, way out of position, dangerously close to them. Who is that idiot? Then the green island and the blue ocean rotate into view as his pilot puts the Betty into a power dive. Another plane flashes overhead with a roar that cuts through the noise of the Betty's engines, and although it is nothing more than a black flash, its odd forktailed silhouette registers in his mind. It was a P-38 Lightning, and the last time Admiral Yamamoto checked, the Nipponese Air Force wasn't flying any of those.      The voice of Admiral Ugaki comes through on the radio from the other Betty, right behind Yamamoto's, ordering Yamamoto's pilot to stay in formation. Yamamoto cannot see anything in front of them except for the surf washing ashore on Bougainville, and the wall of trees, seeming to grow higher and higher, as the plane descends--the tropical canopy now actually above them. He is Navy, not an Air Force man, but even he knows that when you can't see any planes in front of you in a dogfight, you have problems. Red streaks flash past from behind, burying themselves in the steaming jungle ahead, and the Betty begins to shake violently. Then yellow light fills the corners of both of his eyes: the engines are on fire. The pilot is heading directly for the jungle now; either the plane is out of control, or the pilot is already dead, or it is a move of atavistic desperation: run, run into the trees!      They enter the jungle in level flight, and Yamamoto is astonished how far they go before hitting anything big. Then the plane is bludgeoned wide open by mahogany trunks, like baseball bats striking a wounded sparrow, and he knows it's over. The greenhouse disintegrates around him, the meridians and parallels crumpling and rending which isn't quite as bad as it sounds since the body of the plane is suddenly filled with flames. As his seat tears loose from the broken dome and launches into space, he grips his sword, unwilling to disgrace himself by dropping his sacred weapon, blessed by the emperor, even in this last instant of his life. His clothes and hair are on fire as he tumbles like a meteor through the jungle, clenching his ancestral blade.      He realizes something: The Americans must have done the impossible: broken all of their codes. That explains Midway, it explains the Bismarck Sea, Hollandia, everything. It especially explains why Yamamoto--who ought to be sipping green tea and practicing calligraphy in a misty garden--is, in point of fact, on fire and hurtling through the jungle at a hundred miles per hour in a chair, closely pursued by tons of flaming junk. He must get word out! The codes must all be changed! This is what he is thinking when he flies head-on into a hundred-foot-tall Octomelis sumatrana.***

Authored entries

Wikipedia: Beriberi

Beriberi is an ailment caused by a deficiency of vitamin B1 (thiamine), the symptoms of which may include weight loss, emotional disturbances, impaired sensory perception, weakness, and periods of irregular heartbeat.

Beriberi occurs in people whose staple diet consists mainly of polished white rice, which has little or no thiamine. Therefore the disease has been seen traditionally in people in Asian countries and in chronic alcoholics with impaired liver function. If a baby is fed the milk of a mother who suffers from a deficiency in thiamine, the child may develop beriberi.

There are two forms of the disease: wet beriberi and dry beriberi. Wet beriberi affects the heart; it is sometimes fatal, as it causes a combination of heart failure and weakening of the capillary walls, which causes the peripheral tissues to become waterlogged. Dry beriberi causes wasting and partial paralysis resulting from damage to the peripheral nerves.

The first stage in discovering the cause of beriberi was in the 1890s, when a Dutch doctor, Christiaan Eijkman, found that fowls fed only on polished rice developed similar symptoms to his patients who had beriberi, and that they could be cured if they were also fed some of the husks from the rice grains. In 1912, Casimir Funk isolated the anti-beriberi factor from rice and called it vitamine - an amine essential for life. In the 1930s, the chemical formula of this vitamin B1 was published by Robert R. Williams, and it was named thiamine.

Treatment is with thiamine hydrochloride, either in tablet form or injection. A rapid and dramatic recovery can be made when this is administered to patients with wet beriberi and their health can be transformed within an hour of administration of the treatment. Thiamine occurs naturally in fresh foods and cereals, particularly fresh meat, legumes, green vegetables, fruit, and milk.

Thiamin

Thiamin, also known as Vitamin B1 has the chemical formula (when isolated in the chloride form):

C12H17ClN4OS·HCl It is colourless, soluble in water, and insoluble in alcohol. It decomposes if heated too much. Thiamine
Thiamine
The mononitrate looks like this

Thiamin pyrophosphate is a coenzyme of pyruvate dehydrogenase, oxoglutarate dehydrogenase and transketolase. Because the first two of these enzymes are important in the metabolism of carbohydrates, thiamin deficiency causes problems with it. Thiamin deficiency also causes the diseases Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome and beriberi, diseases common in chronic abusers of alcohol.

Commonly also spelled "thiamine".

Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome

Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome is a combination of Korsakoff's syndrome which constitutes confusion, aphonia and confabulation and Wernicke's encephalopathy which is nystagmus, opthalmoplegia, coma and, if untreated, death. It is also known as cerebral beriberi, which is beriberi (thiamine deficiency disease) in the brain.

This results from severe acute deficiency of thiamine superimposed on a chronic deficiency. Usually found in malnourished chronic alcoholics.

The diagnosis can be confirmed by measuring blood levels of thiamine. Treatment is to reverse the thiamine deficiency by giving supplemental thiamine - usually an injection to begin with and supplemental oral doses.

Korsakoff's syndrome

Korsakoff's syndrome, with symptoms of severe anterograde and retrograde amnesia, is caused by damage to mammillary bodies and other brain regions due to deficiency of thiamine. This is most often caused by chronic alcoholism, though other conditions including severe malnutrition, have been known to cause it.

An associated disorder, Wernicke's encephalopathy often accompanies Korsakoff's syndrome and the combined syndrome is called the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome.