Thiamine was first named "aneurin" (for anti-neuritic vitamin). Sir Rudolph Peters, in Oxford, introduced thiamine-deprived pigeons as a model for understanding how thiamine deficiency can lead to the pathological-physiological symptoms of beriberi. Indeed, feeding the pigeons upon polished rice leads to an easily recognizable behavior of head retraction, a condition called opisthotonos. If not treated, the animals died after a few days. Administration of thiamine at the stage of opisthotonos led to a complete cure within 30 minutes. As no morphological modifications were observed in the brain of the pigeons before and after treatment with thiamine, Peters introduced the concept of a biochemical lesion.