A NUTRITIONAL DISTURBANCE IN ADULTS RESEMBLING CELIAC DISEASE AND SPRUE

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Abstract
As a general rule, organic disease of the gastrointestinal tract is today readily recognized and correctly appraised. The present state of our knowledge, however, does not permit an equal degree of precision in the recognition of functional disorders of digestion and absorption. For this reason we report a group of cases in which there existed a clinical state which we either had not seen or had failed to recognize before. The observations consisted of an extreme degree of emaciation, of severe anemia of the macrocytic type, of a low blood calcium with its associated sensory and motor phenomena, and of fatty diarrhea—all, apparently, the result of malabsorption of food and possibly also of minerals. The proper classification of these cases aroused considerable interest. For want of a better term we chose to classify them as nontropical sprue. They might have been classified with equal justification as chronic digestive insufficiency of

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