1 Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
The significance of nutritional knowledge for pediatrics and pediatricians has undergone some dramatic fluctuations in the last 50 years. Early in the 20th century, during the immediate postnatal period of modern pediatrics, nutrition was a major preoccupation for the physician who cared for infants and children. Many of his working hours were spent manipulating formulas and diets and looking for elusive diagnostic clues in the stool characteristics of infants. These practices were looked upon with bewilderment and suspicion by other members of the medical profession and, in the light of newer knowledge, some of them may well have involved an element of witchcraft.