Rumination in Infancy

That rumination in young children after the first year of life is not very rare, might be inferred from the collection by Wirtz of 32 cases reported in medical literature; cases in which the anomaly, though present in adults, had begun during childhood. In fact, according to the study of Johannessen, the majority of the cases of rumination begin between the ages of 10 and 20 years, or perhaps somewhat earlier, according to Wirtz, and rarely in adult life. Though mention of childhood as the time of the onset of rumination is repeatedly to be found in the literature, detailed reports ofdirectobservations of rumination in children themselves, especially in the first year of life, are very infrequent. There exist merely short, cursory notes on eleven cases of ruminant infants (Wirtz); and minute reports published by Hermine Maas, Pouliot-Moricheau, Wirtz, Lust,1Meyerhofer, Bruening,2Peiser, Aschenheim3and