The work was undertaken with a view to adding to our information of the digestive capacity of infants for starch foods, a subject on which we have had many and varying expressions of opinion, based on clinical observations.
All the infants on whom tests were made were inmates of the New York Infant Asylum. The advantage of making such a study in institution children is obvious, when we remember that the feeding of such patients (the amount of starch given, for example) can here be kept in perfect control. Further, the test is more severe, for the reason that the institutionchild does not possess the vigor and vitality of those more fortunately situated.
The study comprises the observations made on eighty-seven children, 677 stool examinations having been made. Because of defective technic and errors in the early examinations, which our time allowance does not permit us to discuss at this