Therapeutics of infancy and childhood.

  • Jacobi, A. (Abraham), 1830-1919.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Therapeutics of infancy and childhood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    28/540 (page 14)
    doubt many disturbances of digestion are to be explained by a deficiency of water, certainly many more than are due to an excess of it, for the latter is speedily relieved by rapid absorp- tion. For the reasons given, I advocate under all conditions a plentiful addition of water to children's food. In this con- nection I would lay stress upon the fact that, as a rule, small children receive water only as they get it in their milk or milk food. Alike in summer and in winter, it is probable that the fact seldom occurs to a mother or nurse that a child may be thirsty without being hungry at the same time. Cer- tainly many a discomfort and even sickness in a child is con- ditioned upon the fact that it has been compelled to eat in order to get its thirst satisfied, and often has to suffer thirst because the over-stimulated and injured stomach will take no more nourishment at irregular and too short intervals. There are even normal products of digestion capable of disturbances in the digestive process, chief among which is peptone itself, which is not absorbed unless it be greatly diluted. I have, therefore, considered it necessary in preparing the rules for the feeding of children, which the New York Health Depart- ment has annually published and distributed since 1872, to insist upon giving infants who cannot ask in so many words for it, an occasional drink of water, at least during the hot weather. When there is the least ground for the supposition that the drinking-water is contaminated with germs of dis- ease, or where it is unusually hard, it should be boiled before its admixture with children's food, whether the diet be milk or a mixed one. In general it will give greater satisfaction to use the boiled water systematically, even though there be no apparent urgency for it in the cases of very young infants. There are many other indications for the administration of water in the diseases of the young. In many morbid condi- tions it is wanting. Perspiration, diarrhoea, general inanition,