For many years the subject of spasmophilia or infantile tetany has been of great interest to the pediatricians. The modern idea is that spasmophilia is a condition rather than a disease; that in the organism there is the latent possibility of the manifestation of active symptoms of this condition, and that this manifestation may be produced by various factors in the surroundings of the child, but especially by a food which is injurious to a given child at a given time. We see, therefore, that two factors underlie the production of the clinical manifestations of spasmophilia or tetany. The first of these is the diathesis or predispostion; the second, the exciting cause. With the first of these this paper will have nothing to do.
ETIOLOGY
As yet no one has attempted to determine how this spasmophilic predisposition is acquired, nor how limited. It is a generally accepted fact that the