ABSTRACT
Although I am 82 years old and long past adolescence, words my beloved grandfather spoke to me when I was a teenager still resound in my mind: “Tommy (my childhood name),” he said, “now that I finally know something about pediatrics, I must leave.” Ludwig Ferdinand Meyer, MD, indeed knew something about pediatrics—as a young researcher in Berlin, Germany, he had discovered the role of potassium in infant diarrhea, thus radically improving every child's chances of surviving infancy.
