8 A small red bean called adzuke, possessing both laxative and diuretic properties, is a favorite remedy with the Japanese for beriberi. It is used alone or mixed with rice, and is not unfrequently the only means resorted to for the successful cure of mild cases.
No drug has been discovered possessing specific properties in this disease. In the wet form, medication consists in the administration of drugs calculated to draw off the excess of serum in the areolar tissues and in the serous sacs. First in point of efficacy for this purpose are the hydragogue cathartics. In my own practice the sulphate of magnesia, in large and repeated doses, has given the best results; elaterium, a powder of jalap, squill, and digitalis, and, in fact, any medicine which will give frequent and copious stools, are sure to afford marked relief to the more urgent symptoms, and in many cases will alone effect a cure. Care must be taken, however, not to exhaust the patient, though I have never seen the judicious use of this method of treatment do harm.
Copious bleeding is recommended by Anderson, especially in the stage of greatest danger, but I have never been able to convince myself of its safety.
The almost specific virtue claimed by the old Indian physicians for treeak farook is no doubt due to its cathartic properties.
Diuretics are indicated for the same reason as cathartics, and any of the more active are productive of good results. They are too slow in their action, however, to be relied on otherwise than as adjuvants to cathartics. I have found juniper gin to answer an excellent purpose, both as a stimulant and diuretic, where there was danger of exhaustion from the free use of cathartics.
The medical treatment of dry beriberi differs materially from that of the wet disease. Cathartics and diuretics are alike useless, and the former injurious. The ordinary means, such as electricity, strychnia, frictions, etc., employed in cases of muscular atrophy and paralysis from other causes, are indicated when the active stage has passed, but they are useless, and even injurious, before this time. The muscular hyperæsthesia common to both forms of the disease may be generally greatly relieved by anodyne liniments containing aconite. The internal use of the latter is highly recommended by some. Hypodermic injections of morphia afford relief to the painful sense of constriction in the calves of the legs so often complained of.