SOME OLD DATA TO SUPPORT THE NOTION THAT LEAN CHILDREN HANDLE INFECTIONS BETTER THAN THOSE WHO ARE HEAVIER
1 Rochester, Minnesota
In looking at old family papers, I found the report of a study° my father conducted while a resident of Pfaundler in Munich. He reviewed the course of scarlet fever in 200 children and diphtheria in 500 patients. He arranged them according to their weight and found that children with weights greater than the mean weight of the group had more days of fever, had more deaths (five vs. one) than those who were lean. The patients with diphtheria had more days requiring intubation than the children with weights below the mean. The author could then only speculate about the cause for the difference.




