Infant Botulism in 1931

The identification in 1976 in California of infants with botulism (for references, see the companion article in this issue, p 586) prompted a review of state records of all 603 officially classified cases known to have occurred in California between 1899 and 1976. None of these cases occurred in an infant; the youngest case found was that of a 15-month-old child who became ill as part of a common-source outbreak of food-borne botulism. As part of our efforts to elucidate the pathogenesis of infant botulism, we noted that milk products have rarely been associated with food-borne botulism¹even though pasteurization does not killClostridium botulinumspores.²Because milk is the principal food of infants, we therefore undertook in 1978 a further review of all reported food-borne botulism cases linked to milk products. One such case that occurred in California in 1931 was listed as "suspected botulism" in Dr