Because of the likelihood of enteritis from cross-infection, Heubner,1 in 1897, questioned the advisability of segregating sick infants in hospitals. To decrease the spread of enteritis in institutions for infants, he recommended a dual staff of nurses—"the one to care for the lower half of the infant; the other, to care for the upper half." Finkelstein2 published an early paper on the prevalence of enteritis among bottle-fed infants. Nearly thirty years later, Czerny and Keller3 said:
On numerous occasions we have observed that asepsis and antisepsis failed to prevent the transmission of enteritis. With our increase in knowledge, however, house infections have decreased in frequency. In institutions where young infants are housed, it is, today, taken for granted that all food is sterilized, and kept so until it is consumed. When, in spite of precautions, enteritis breaks out, one must assume that the etiologic agent was transmitted