How Simple Carrot Soup Saved Thousands of Children From Death

Doctor Ernst Moro transformed baby care

Ernst Moro, the pediatrician who saved thousands of lives with carrot soup | Image by Wikimedia

A hundred years ago, pediatrician Ernst Moro cooked carrots and reduced child mortality in Germany by half.

In the early 20th century, an average life span was half shorter than today. But this wasn’t because people died at 35–40. The real reason was that every fourth child passed away in infancy. And 95 percent of the infant mortality rate in homes was the result of diarrhea.

So people went to bed earlier not because they were bored and horny. The only way they could extend the family line was to have a lot of kids and hope most of them would survive.

Then came Ernst Moro (1874–1951) who changed the rate of dying in Europe with a simple recipe.

Ernst Moro wasn’t just another doctor

Moro was born in 1874 in Ljubljana, Slovenia — the homeland of Melania Trump and basketball player Luka Dončić. Back then the city in the Alps was called Laibach and belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

After high school, he moved to Graz (today’s Austria) to study medicine and received an M.D. in 1899.

Then the young doctor relocated to Vienna and began to work with eminent Professor Theodor…