[Effect of hunger on the development of the child].

In a brief view there are described experimental results obtained from starving animals and teratogenous influences of the deficiency disease. By reference to a model group of 60 children there are depicted the complex influences of the deficiency disease and stresses of war. Two subgroups are described clinically, explaining the various pathogenesis. Children born under conditions of war and persecution or living under such conditions during childhood--41 persons. Children who after the war were born into families of previously persecuted people--19 persons. Neurotic conditions accompanied by anxiety, headache, disturbance of memory, tendency to fits, and excitability are common to both of these groups. The differences manifest themselves in the percentage of tiredness, sleeplessness, and depression, which occur much more frequently in the first group, while bodily weakness, ailments characterized by the occurrence of fits, perinatal encephalopathies with pyramidal disorders are more often observed in the second group. Lack of adaptability, especially in the first postwar years in the first group, could be remedied in the majority of cases, although it was possible here, too, to observe symptoms of premature senility. These cases showed not only hypertension (26.8 per cent), but also roentgenologically demonstrable arteriosclerotic changes. The higher percentage and statistically significant difference in the occurrence of anxiety and depression as compared with the percentage of neuroses in the average population as well as the frequent occurrence of perinatal encephalopathies and ailments characterized by fits show the serious degree to which the consequences of war still manifest themselves in children after many years.