An Attempt to Reproduce Cœliac Disease Experimentally in Young Animals by Excluding the External Pancreatic Secretion from the Intestine *

One of the puzzling conditions encountered in the practice of pediatrics is the fairly well-defined syndrome known as cceliac disease. This condition was originally described in 1888 by Gee29 who formulated as the principal symptoms: distended abdomen, pronounced emaciation affecting the limbs more than the face, muscular atrophy, anemia, and a white diarrhea. Cheadle20 called the condition "acholia", believing, despite the absence of jaundice, that the pale color of the stools resulted from a lack of bile secretion into the intestine. What appears to be the same syndrome was described in 1908 by Herter34 under the name of "intestinal infantilism", with the same symptoms as described by Gee. Heubner"6 designated the disease, which he considered to involve a constitutional weakness of the digestive apparatus, by the noncommittal title of "schwere Verdauungsinsuffizienz beim Kinde jenseits des S'auglingsalters". Modern opinion (Miller52, Neff54, Thaysen80) concurs that Gee, Cheadle, Herter, and Heubner were describing the same disease complex, for which, in view of its obscure etiology, Miller and Neff suggest the retention of Gee's original name of cceliac disease. The similarity of coeliac disease and tropical sprue is emphasized by Thaysen80 81, who considers that Gee's "cceliac affection of Englishmen returning from India" could be nothing but tropical sprue. Thaysen78, and later Holmes and Starr38, in describing under the name of non-tropical sprue a sprue-like affection of northern countries, emphasize the strong resemblance between nontropical sprue, cceliac disease, and tropical sprue, and Thaysen80 discusses all three diseases, which he considers to be identical, under the name of "idiopathic steatorrhea".