[Not only bottles. Glass baby's bottles in between the second half of XIXth century and the first decades of the XXth]. / Non solo bottiglie. I poppatoi di vetro tra la seconda metà dell'ottocento e i primi decenni del novecento.

Mother's milk is the best food for the baby. The need to use foods other than mother's milk has always represented a challenging problem to be solved. The author warns that the high mortality during the first year of life during the early years of the XXth century (20%) peaked at an amazing 80% in children artificially fed at orphanages. In the considered years, the usage of baby's bottle spread among babies that could not be fed by mothers or wet-nurses. The idea of rubber teat 1845 and of automatic devices for the production of glass bottle - 1903 - contributed to the diffusion of the baby's bottle. First baby's bottles were variously shaped. However, the finding of severe gastroenteritis caused by a long rubber tube attached to the rubber teat (the so-called death-bottle), together with the necessity of a careful cleaning and the diffusion of Soxhket's system (sterilization of many bottles in the same container) will lead to the choice of large mouthed cylindrical bottles, very similar to the plastic bottles used nowadays.

The enigma of lambdoid positional molding.

One hundred and twenty-one consecutive patients presenting to the Children's National Medical Center with lambdoid positional molding (LPM) were reviewed. Clinical features included unilateral occipital flattening and alopecia and forward displacement of the ipsilateral ear, forehead, and maxilla. Head tilt and tightness of the ipsilateral sternocleidomastoid muscle were common. An unexplained preponderance of LPM was found in males (74%) and on the right side (72%), both findings statistically significant (p < 0.001). Importantly, a variety of other abnormalities were seen with LPM: torticollis (41%), large head circumference (40), excess extra-axial cerebrospinal fluid (35), developmental delay (19), and other CNS abnormalities (20%). Systemic problems affecting the mobility were also common. Only 3 patients had craniosynostosis, and only 2 with LPM required surgery for severe cosmetic deformities. An apparent increase in the incidence of LPM was attributed to current recommendations to keep infants supine to decrease the risk of sudden infant death syndrome, overutilization of infant carriers similar to cradleboards of earlier cultures, and neonatal medical problems resulting in relative immobility. No evidence was found to support the concept that LPM causes compressive brain pathology; thus, surgical treatment is not required for such fears. Further, the sequelae of underlying CNS and systemic problems associated with LPM would not be corrected by opening unfused sutures, but could even be misinterpreted as complications of surgery.

[New documentation on the Robert baby bottle]. / Nouveaux documents sur le biberon Robert.

The author makes known about a dozen unpublished documents (puzzle-cards, invoice, advertisements, post card, stamped tin signs printed in colors, catalogue, prospectuses) which shed light on the history of the manufacture Robert baby bottles (located successively in Dijon, Paris and in Martres-de-Veyre) and on the practice of bottle feeding.