Ernst Moro

Ernst Moro (1874 to 1951) was a Slovenian physician and pediatrician who studied medicine at the University of Graz, took his M.D. in 1899, worked in Vienna with Theodor Escherich and habilitated in pediatrics in Munich in 1906. He became professor of pediatrics at the University of Heidelberg in 1911. He was the first in western medicine to describe the infant reflex that now bears his name, the Moro reflex. His other contributions include the Moro test, a percutaneous tuberculin reaction, the finding that the blood of breast-fed children has stronger bactericidal activity than that of bottle-fed ones, the isolation of Lactobacillus acidophilus from children's stomachs, an infant formula called Moro's milk, and a carrot soup and an apple diet used against childhood diarrhea. In 1936, after the Nazis came to power, he resigned his Heidelberg chair, his wife being of Jewish origin, and kept a private clinic until he retired in 1948.