THE FEEDING OF IMMATURE AND ATROPHIC INFANTS

Predisposing causes to infantile immaturity and atrophy may at times be detected in the pregnant woman, and certain of them later may be of considerable value in determining why the usual milk formulas fail to nourish the child.

Scant consideration is given to the fact that an individual's existence really commences at the time of conception and too much importance is attached to the usual expression which merely states the dividing line between intrauterine and extrauterine life. At conception the child is endowed with all the ills or graces of a bad or a good ancestry and little can be done to counteract the immutable laws of heredity, but with environment, intrauterine as well extrauterine, the physician can do much either to harm or to aid the growing individual. It is a well-recognized fact that pregnancy associated with marked anemia or toxemia predisposes to poor fetal development, which may