Though the generation of blood is related to the heart, liver, spleen and kidney, infantile iron-deficiency anemia is more closely connected with the spleen. Because of infantile " constant insufficiency of the spleen", shortage of nutrients in the body may result from food preference, less intake of food, or improper nursing after ailment, or scanty and thin breast milk and failure to instantly increase supplementary food. In this case, malabsorption due to asthenia of the spleen and stomach affects the absorption and transformation of hematopeietic substance, causes the loss of hematopoietic substance, giving rise to anemia.

The commonly-seen symptoms of mild anemia include symptoms of the spleen asthenia like poor appetite or food preference, or sound appetite but more frequency of defecation, lustreless complexion, whitish and greasy fur or whitish and thin fur. The commonly-encountered symptoms of severe one are the symptoms of asthenia of both the spleen and kidney such as pale complexion, pale lips and tongue with a little fur, retarded growth, feeblemindedness and skeleton deformity; if constipation, dysphoria, restlessness, cry at night, even tremor and clonic convulsion appear, the disease may be related to the heart and liver, too.