Christiaan Eijkman received the Nobel prize for Medicine in 1929 for his discovery that beri-beri is a vitamin-deficiency disease. He had conducted his seminal research on the disease in the fonner Dutch East Indies between 1886 and 1898 at the location of. the present Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology in Jakarta. In 1998, the first International Eijkman Symposium was held in The Hague, The Netherlands, to celebrate the fact that exactly 100 years earlier Christiaan Eijkman was inaugurated as full professor in Hygiene and Bacteriology at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. The Eijkman-Winkler Centre for Microbiology, Infectious Diseases and Inflammation is the direct descendant of Eijkman's department in Utrecht. vii Contributing Authors Bacbti Alisjabbana Department of Internal Medicine Padjadjaran University (UNP AD) Dr Hasan Sadikin General Hospital Bandung Indonesia Kevin Baird US Navy Medical Research Unit-2 J1. Percetakan Negara 29 Jakarta 15650 Indonesia Phone: +62-21-421-4457 Fax: +62-214244507 Jan P . B. van den Berg Nederland-Batam Foundation Stationsweg 56 6711 PT Ede The Netherlands Phone: +31-318610368 Fax: +31-318612476 Greet J. Boland Eijkman-Winkler Centre University Medical Centre Utrecht ix x Contributing Authors P. O. Box 85500 3584 CX Utrecht The Netherlands Phone: +31-302506536 Fax: +31-302541770 G J . Boland@azu. n1 Graham V. Brown Department of Medicine University of Melbourne Royal Melbourne Hospital Victoria Australia gvb@unimelb. edu. au Frank E. J. Coenjaerts Eijkman-Winkler Centre University Medical Centre Utrecht P. O. Box 85500 3584 CX Utrecht The Netherlands Phone: +31-302507637 Fax: +31-302541770 . EJ . Coenjaerts@lab. azu.