If I also undertake to propose a grouping which shall enable UR to arrange the affections niet with clinically in definite categories I do so in the full knowledge of the inadequacy of any such attempt, be cause we still have no conclusive knowledge of the nature of the dis turbances of digestion and nutrition in infancy. propose the following classification: I. Disturbances of Nutrition in Breast-fed Infants.
(a) Front overfeeding.
(b) From insufficient food.
(c) From unsuitability of a special breast-ntilk.
(d) From insufficiency of the digestive organs (may result from premature birth, hereditary taint, intra-uterine infection, malformations of the digestive apparatus).
(e) From bacterial contamination of the food.
II. Disturbances of Nutrition in Artificial Feeding.
(a) From overfeeding.
(b) F1'0111111SliffiCiellt f00(1 (too great dilution).
(c) From failure of utilization of the food (either as a whole, or in its individual constituents).
(d) From bacterial contamination.
It is self-evident that in every child the different causes specified in the above classification can be combined. We can designate disturb
ances according to tlteir course as acute, subacute, or chronic, the last being at times interrupted by acute exacerbations. A differentiation according to the exelusive or prepondering involvement of the particu lar parts of the bowel, does not seem to be serviceable, because, as a result of the intimate functional connection, the different parts of the digestive tract are involved at the same time, or in quick succession.
Indeed in this classification we must abandon old established terms, such as dyspepsia, cholera infantum, follicular enteritis, and must also strike out atrophy as an independent disease conception. lVe can do this without hesitation, because in the above classification, the characteristic outlines of the disease picture on the one hand find their place in the symptomatology, and the analogous results of diff erent causes, on the other hand, are not erroneously brought together in a g,eneral clinical type.