Moniliasis in Pediatrics

1. Introduction  François Valleix,¹ a French pediatrician, wrote about thrush in 1838: "The succession of symptoms has not been studied as much as it should have been; the observers who are convinced that thrush means nothing more than a pseudomembraneous inflammation of the mouth have not been looking for signs of a more generalized infection." Valleix expressed this opinion in his voluminous book on the diseases of the newborn which was published one year before the fungus of thrush was discovered.² More than one-third of the book was devoted to thrush. The author reported in detail autopsy findings of 22 infants who died of systemic dissemination of thrush in a hospital within two and one-half months. More attention has been focused again on moniliasis recently partly because of accumulating reports of cases of this disease entity, especially following the use of antibiotics, and also because of the association