Celiac disease is now recognized as a clinical entity, and since its modern description, dating from 1888,1 much has been written about it without any great light being thrown on its etiology. Bacterial infection has presumably been the cause, according to some investigators, but no one has produced the disease with these offending organisms, nor have they always been found in well defined cases in the hands of other competent investigators.
Indigestion of one type or another, that is, indigestion caused by fat or by carbohydrate, but particularly by fat, has been advanced as the cause of the disease, largely on the basis of what is apparent in the stools of these children. The mineral salts have also been suspected of causing this condition. Postmortem examination has not thrown much light on the etiology.
The following unbiased study was made on a patient with celiac disease in order to