Malabsorption in Coeliac Sprue

For at least three centuries, Holland has been at the centre of research on intestinal malabsorption. In the 17th and 18th centuries, early descriptions of coeliac disease and tropical sprue were published by physicians trained in Holland, and it was in 1950 that Dicke published his painstaking and vital observations that coeliac disease in children was caused by the inges­ tion of wheat flour. Su...