Lipoid nephrosis is now considered as a clinical entity. It is characterized by an insidious onset, usually without any evidence of a preceding acute infection. There is a chronic recurrent edema lasting a few days or a few months, with a marked tendency to remission. There is an increase in the lipoid and a decrease in the protein content of the blood. Occasionally skin lesions are seen. The etiology is not clear. Some writers state the belief that lipoid nephrosis is due to bacterial infection; others, that it is a purely metabolic disturbance affecting the entire body.
As shown by us in a previous paper1 the prognosis of lipoid nephrosis is not good. A frequent cause of death is intercurrent pneumococcal peritonitis. In the present paper, nine cases of lipoid nephrosis in children are described; five of the patients died. These cases are interesting in that pneumococci or streptococci