In view of the fact that routine autopsies at the St. Louis Children's Hospital on infants who had died of so-called cholera infantum due not to food poisoning but to some parenteral infection had not disclosed any evidence of the focus responsible for the disease, more thorough examinations were made. In the fall of 1923, pus was found in the mastoid antrums of infants who had died of gastro-intestinal disturbances, and who did not show any other focus of infection.
At that time we were not familiar with the work of Maurice Renaud of Paris, nor with that of Dean and Byfield of Iowa City.
In 1921 Renaud1 reported that he had performed autopsies on seventy infants who had died of infantile diarrhea, and had found pus in the mastoid antrums in every case. In thirty cases the ear infection had been noted before death, but in the