I am posting this message with an old German description of marasmus because the original sender could not get the list to accept it. After reading it I really believe that marasmus in infants today is 'failure to thrive". The children are very thin and pale and are not very energetic. My own daughter had so many food allergies when she was born that when we got her on soy milk at 8 weeks she looked like one of the starving babies in Africa according to my mother. My husband had the same problem as a baby and his life was saved when they finally put him on a diet of dextrose maltose. So failure to thrive or a marasmus-like condition can be from neglect or disease or from such things as food allergies. I doublt that mothers had anything to substitute for milk back in the 19th century. Maybe Goat's milk saved some babies. There are some interesting folk customs that have to do with newborns in old Bohemia. I know that one was that no one who visited a newborn and its mother should ever say the baby was beautiful or give similar compliments -- that could cause the baby to waste away. There were also talismans and other tokens to keep evil away from babies that were kept in their cradles and in little purses on their person. Rainer Maaz's Email about Marasumus follows. Karen In a message dated 3/19/2006 3:28:51 PM Mountain Standard Time, 550289330814-0001@t-online.de writes: I don't know what I did wrong - but this contribution was not accepted by the list: The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, Micropaedia, vol.VI/p.595 defines "Marasmus, extreme loss of weight and wasting away, particularly when a cause cannot be ascertained and when the condition exists in an infant." It pays to have a look at a reference book of that time which explains expressions like this cause of death as it was then used/understood: The Brockhaus, Bilder-Conversations-Lexikon, Leipzig, 1839, vol.III/p.48 f says: "Marasmus, zuweilen auch >Darrsucht> und >Auszehrung aus Altersschwäche<, wird der aus einer sehr langen Lebensdauer naturgemäß hervorgehende Verfall des Menschen in geistiger und körperlicher Hinsicht genannt, welcher ausnahmsweise aber auch ungewöhnlich früh durch eine ausschweifende oder mit zu vielen, Geist und Körper gleich erschöpfenden Anstrengungen verbundenen Lebensart herbeigeführt werden kann. Beträchtliche Abnahme der geistigen und der Lebenskräfte und daher rührende mangelhafte Ernährung des Körpers, Überwiegen seiner festen Bestandtheile durch einen hohen Grad von Abmagerung und allgemeine Erschlaffung sind Merkmale dieses Zustandes. ..." M.: drying out, draining of all one's strength, extreme emaciation - an old person's decay of his or her physical and psychic situation/abilities, also with younger people as consequence of a dissolute or extremely strenuous way of living for body and mind, this considerable decrease as reason for bad nutrition and general weakening of body and mind Rainer Maaz Fulda, Germany