Lead poisoning has been known in Europe for centuries, especially in France, where systematic observations began with the work of Tanquerel,1 who recognized a variety of cerebral disorders due to this metal, and who introduced the term "lead encephalopathy" for this group of conditions. Numerous reports and publications have since come from Australia and Queensland, where the condition apparently occurs with fair frequency.2 In the United States, Stewart3 made a complete study of an epidemic of lead poisoning in the eighties occurring in Philadelphia, while Aub4 and his associates made a notable contribution to the scientific study of lead poisoning and devised a most interesting method of deleading treatment.
In the American pediatric literature, the first case of lead poisoning with meningeal symptoms was reported in 1914 by Thomas and Blackfan5 in a child of 5 years, in which the source of lead was white