Rethinking the medical causes of infant death in early modern Europe: a closer look at church registers and medical terminology

The historical roots of the prevailing hypothesis about the main causes of high infant mortality in Europe in the last four centuries are presented in detail focusing on German sources and publications. Assumptions about infections being the main cause of deaths during infancy clearly need to be reevaluated. The terminology of early sources has passed many steps of translation and interpretation. In the old church registers, wording in the local vernacular merely described the most visible symptoms before the final stages of diseases. Scientific medicine and its terminology repeatedly went astray before real pediatric competence was acquired in the nutritional physiology of infants. The combination of different kinds of evidence points to serious flaws in the prevailing hypothesis, while source data and publications confirm a different conclusion: inadequate nutrition due to early weaning and unsuitable substitute food caused the specific set of symptoms described in the historical sources. Medical evidence about infant malnutrition in developing countries supports this new interpretation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]