Treatment of nutritional anemia in infants.

While iron deficiency is a common cause of anemia in infants, requiring specific treatment by administration of iron, there are other causes which require treatment equally specific. Anemia due to a nutritional deficiency can be improved only by providing the needed nutriment in sufficient quantity. Two case reports are presented. One is of megaloblastic anemia in an infant, which was treated with a variety of vitamin preparations before administration of folic acid produced improvement. The other report is of anemia due to iron deficiency treated successfully with ferrous sulfate in a dosage twenty times that previously used prophylactically. In prescribing an antianemic preparation the physician should assure himself that the dosage is adequate (for example, 0.5 gm. daily of ferrous sulfate for iron deficiency). "Broad-spectrum" preparations may be lacking in specific hematinics while containing a variety of vitamins which have no specific hematologic value.