Our purpose in the present work was to investigate the cause of acidosis in the condition which is variously called summer diarrhea, acute dehydration, acute intoxication, etc. The infants used in this study all presented the classic symptoms: diarrhea, vomiting, dehydration (as diagnosed by the sunken fontanel, sunken eyeballs and loss of elasticity in the skin) and a more or less marked prostration. No cases were included which did not clearly show these symptoms. Two of the patients were later found to be suffering from a dysenteric infection, but as neither the symptoms in the acute stage nor the chemical composition of the blood differed in any way from the rest of the group, these cases have been included in this report. The samples of blood were taken while the patient was fasting and before any treatment had been given.
It is not possible to obtain from dehydrated infants enough