"During the first few days of life, little Kazu was apparently normal, except for his prematureness and a rather great weight for a seven-month infant. And then the change began. His nurse first noticed an increasing appetite. He cried constantly and would be silent only when feeding. He emptied nursing bottles in a few seconds, after he learned to pull off the nipple, and was soon consuming a quart of milk every hour. The nurse humored him, in order to keep him quiet, and presently became afraid to tell either the parents or the doctor just how much milk her charge was drinking. As the days passed and no ill effects developed, she became less worried, although the daily milk ration had to be increased twice, to 23 quarts a day on the sixth day. "Kazu doubled his weight in the first eleven days, and at the end of two weeks tipped the scales at 39 pounds. His pink tender skin was now rapidly becoming normal in color and texture, and he was behaving more and more like an ordinary child, although already of startling size. By the fourth week he was drinking 59 quarts of milk a day and weighed 145 pounds. The parents--by now thoroughly alarmed--called in the doctor, who at once realized the cause of the abnormality. He could offer no suggestions, however, save to continue feeding at a rate to keep the child quiet. This, by the sixth week, soared to the incredible figure of 130 quarts a day to feed a baby now five feet tall and weighing 290 pounds. At this point the Takahashi family felt that their problem was getting beyond them, and being Buddhists, they appealed to the local temple--it was not in Hiroshima, but at a nearby town--for assistance. The priests took the child in, after a generous contribution had been made by father Takahashi, and for a time the embarrassing matter seemed solved. The Takahashis went on a three weeks vacation to the south coast of Honshu, and all was peaceful, externally at least. "When the family returned, they found a note under the door urgently requesting their presence at the temple. When they arrived, they were met by a highly agitated chief priest. Something had to be done, he said. Things were getting out of hand. He then took them to the nursery. Here they beheld a baby that would have been seven feet eight inches tall if it could stand, and which had weighed in that morning on the platform scales in the temple kitchen, at 670 pounds. After hearing the details of the milk bill, father Takahashi wrote out another check and departed hurriedly. "After the passage of three more weeks, a delegation from the temple again waited upon Mr. Takahashi, with the news that his son now measured 9 feet 3 inches in length, weighed 1175 pounds, and consumed the entire output of a local dairy. They politely requested that he take care of his own infant. Mr. Takahashi as politely refused, and at this point bowed out of our story completely."