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Transcription: [00:02:25]
{SPEAKER name="Watson Davis"}
Dr. Williams, actually you- a person only needs a pinch of this stuff, hardly that, per day or even per year.

[00:02:34]
{SPEAKER name="Robert R. Williams"}
Oh yes, the amount of thiamine actually required per person per year is scarcely a visible amount if you add it in pure form and filed it down the end of a pen knife, it would occupy only- make only a little pile the size of perhaps a- a grain of millet. But, it's just as necessary as if huge quantities were required.

[00:03:01]
{SPEAKER name="Watson Davis"}
Well, thanks to this enrichment of flour and bread, which came into being during the war, didn't it Dr. Williams?

[00:03:10]
{SPEAKER name="Robert R. Williams"}
Yes, it began in 1941.

[00:03:13]
{SPEAKER name="Watson Davis"}
Well thanks to that program, practically all of us have no shortage of thiamine today and, therefore, beriberi is practically unknown, which is the disease that the lack of thiamine causes. It's practically unknown in this country today, isn't it?

[00:03:32]
{SPEAKER name="Robert R. Williams"}
Yes, the doctors can't find cases of beriberi or pellagra, with which to teach their students what the disease looks like anymore, and I'm not sorry to have the doctors deprived of this opportunity, because along with that removal of these diseases has been a- or has been a great improvement in the health and vigor of the mass of the people. No one can say how large of a percentage of the population has gotten benefit, but it's very substantial.

[00:04:04]
{SPEAKER name="Watson Davis"}
Actually, Dr. Williams, people who do have vitamin- thiamine deficiency really do clinically improve very greatly when they're fed it, and there are a few clinical cases of that sort right now, aren't they, from time to time due to food idiosyncrasies and that sort of thing?

[00:04:22]
{SPEAKER name="Robert R. Williams"}
Oh yes, occasional cases will crop up and their responses to the administration of the thing they lack are very, very dramatic. I myself have seen babies in the Philippines respond within three hours, nurse hungerly, and when