Dutch pediatrician Willem K. Dicke treated children with celiac symptoms in the 1930s and 1940s. Celiac disease was already a known problem which retarded children’s growth before slowly killing them. What was causing the illness was not clear, though, and the diagnosis was usually a death sentance.
Dicke noticed that his sickest young patients improved when World War II made flour and bread scarce. Everyone else was dying of starvation. But his sickest children were doing better than ever. When bread became available again, the first precious supplies of bread being given specifically to the (no longer) sick children, and they immediately relapsed. This realization led Dicke to develop the first gluten-free diet, and saving thousands of children’s lives.
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