Thiamine, or thiamin, sometimes called aneurin, is a water-soluble vitamin of the B complex (vitamin B1), whose phosphate derivatives are involved in many cellular processes. Thiamine was the first of the water-soluble vitamins to be described, leading to the discovery of more such trace compounds essential for survival and to the notion of vitamin. Chinese medical texts referred to beriberi (a thiamine deficiency disease) as early as 2700 BC. In 1897 Christiaan Eijkman (1858-1930), a military doctor in the Dutch Indies, discovered that fowl fed on a diet of cooked, polished rice developed paralysis, which could be reversed by discontinuing rice polishing.[6] Eijkman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1929, because his observations led to the discovery of vitamins. An associate, Gerrit Grijns (1865-1944), correctly interpreted the connection between excessive consumption of polished rice and beriberi in 1901: he concluded that rice contained an essential nutrient in the outer layers of the grain that was removed by polishing. Thiamine is found in a wide variety of foods at low concentrations. Yeast and pork meat are the most highly concentrated sources of thiamine. Cereal grains, however, are the most important dietary sources of thiamine in the diet as these foods are consumed readily in most diets. Of the cereal grains, whole grains contain more thiamine than refined grains, as thiamine is found mostly in the outer layers of the grain and in the germ