Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease the aetiology of which is unknown. It was first described 47 years ago (Crohn et af. 1932). There appears to be a real increase in its incidence in the last 20 years. A working definition of Crohn’s disease is ‘a condition in which there is a chronic enteritis usually characterized by areas of intestinal stenosis, and pathologically by non-caseating granulomata in the bowel wall’ (Weterman et al. 1975). As the definition implies the diagnosis is made on clinical, radiological and histological grounds. The clinical picture of patients with Crohn’s disease is that of weight loss, abdominal pain, diarrhoea and stunted growth in children. They may have extra-intestinal manifestations such as pyrexia, uveitis and arthritis. Treatment The treatment of Crohn’s disease can be divided into five main categories: surgery, general symptomatic and supportive treatment, antimicrobial treatment, anti-inflammatory treatment and nutritional treatment. Resection of the affected bowel was once thought to be the definitive treatment but recurrence of the disease is common and now surgery is reserved for the complications of Crohn’s disease unresponsive to medical therapy such as obstruction, unremitting inflammation and haemorrhage, toxic megacolon, free perforation and fistula formation. The aim of medical treatment is to induce a remission. No treatment has been shown to produce a permanent cure for Crohn’s disease. As the disease course is characterized by its chronicity and morbidity a lot of emphasis is placed on symptomatic and supportive treatment. This would include anxiolytic, analgesic and anti-diarrhoeal agents. Broad spectra antibiotics are used for the complications of Crohn’s disease such as abscess formation or perforation. There have been reports that Metronidazole (Ursing & Kamme, 1975) and broad spectra antibiotics (Moss et al. 1978) are effective treatment in acute Crohn’s disease. There are three types of drugs in the anti-inflammatory group: corticosteroids, azothiaprine and salazopyrine. Corticosteroids have been shown to be more effective than azothiaprine or salazopyrine (Singleton, I 976). Nutritional therapy is a new concept introduced in the treatment of Crohn’s disease when it was found that patients were in negative nitrogen balance. There are two methods of putting patients into positive N balance, either by parenteral nutrition or the use of an elemental diet.