Food and the principles of dietetics / by Robert Hutchison.

Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Food and the principles of dietetics / by Robert Hutchison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    restrain the secretion of gastric juice (Pawlow).1 Salt and the condiments, being stimulants of gastric secretion, should be avoided by patients suffering from hyperchlorhydria. If flatulence is much complained of, green vegetables and pulses should be avoided, and potatoes partaken of sparingly, whilst rusks or crisp toast are substituted for bread. The diet should be mainly an animal one, and fluids should be restricted and taken separately from solids, tea, in particular, being very harmful. Diseases of the Intestines. In diarrhoea the chief point to be aimed at in feeding is to select a diet which shall be unirritating, and shall leave as small an un- absorbed residue as possible. If the diarrhoea be very severe, it may be necessary to withhold all food for a day or two, nothing being given by the mouth but a little barley-water to quench thirst. When the symptoms have somewhat abated, and in milder cases from the outset, one can allow weak decoctions of cereal preparations, such as arrowroot, rice, cornflour, sago, or one of the patent cereal foods. These should be given at the body temperature. By-and-by one can begin to give milk, but tentatively and always safeguarded with a little lime-water. Raw-meat juice, alum-whey, egg-white solution, and the pulp of underdone beef are also useful; but all solutions containing the extractives of meat are best avoided. If the patient be very thirsty, he may be allowed sips of cold tea or diluted red wine, or water flavoured with a little lemon-juice. In the treatment of the special form of diarrhoea known as sprue, a strict milk diet is generally recommended by the best authorities. At first three pints of milk are allowed daily, in hourly or two-hourly feeds. In a few days the quantity may be increased to 100 ounces a day, and after ten days to as much as 6 or 7 pints in the twenty-four hours. The strict milk diet should be continued for six weeks after the stools have become solid, after which the diet may be gradually advanced, much in the same way as in gastric ulcer. If after a period of rigid milk diet the patient is unable to return to ordinary food, a course of ‘Salisbury treatment’ (p.512) may be useful. Strawberries have been asserted to have an almost specific influence 1 Backman (Zeit. /. Klin. Med., xl. 224, 1900) has shown from observations on patients that fat causes a considerable diminution in the amount of free hydro- chloric acid in the gastric juice, and probably in the total amount of acid secreted also. On the other hand, it does not prolong gastric digestion nor interfere with the solution of proteids or carbohydrates. It is, therefore, in every way a suitable article of diet in cases of hyperchlorhydria.