"Flux in the Belly:" A History of Infantile Gastroenteritis

Although a major cause of infant mortality for centuries, little research was done on the causes of infants' diarrhea. Artificial feeding, teething, and summer heat were believed to cause the severe disease that spared breastfed infants.

Since antiquity, infants' digestive disorders were termed dyspepsia, flux of the belly, diarrhea, gastroenteritis, watery gripes, the runs, dysentery, or cholera, without definitions. Alois Bednar discerned 3 grades (dyspepsia, diarrhea, and cholera) of the same disease. Infants' neurologic symptoms were interpreted as alimentary toxicosis. Chronic diarrhea caused emaciation and dehydration. In 1950, Laurence Finberg found diarrhea with hypernatremia causing cerebral damage. Seasonal influence was known since Hippocrates. Baudelocque recommended obtaining infant milk fresh from the cow because it decomposes in the summer heat. In the cities, summer diarrhea caused a third of total infant mortality. Physicians debated whether heat acted directly on the infant or spoiled the food. The discovery of microorganisms in the 1860s revolutionized medical understanding. However, influential researchers such as Adalbert Czerny classified nutritional disturbances by assumed pathogenesis ("ex alimentation, ex infection, ex constitution"), but denied the possibility of bacterial infection via milk. Heating baby food, practiced for centuries, was introduced in Denmark, Sweden, and France, whereas in Britain and Germany, professional and public debate on pasteurization persisted.

It took half a century to implement effective hygienic measures once the bacterial origin became known. Foodborne infection was rejected, and the prejudice that raw milk possesses essential "living" properties, adopted by influential scientists, contributed to delaying pasteurization.