Common disorders and diseases of childhood / by George Frederic Still.

  • Still, George Frederic, 1868-1941.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Common disorders and diseases of childhood / by George Frederic Still. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    724/752 (page 708)
    child had syphihs. Even if it be taken as proved—and the evidence is so shght that it can hardly be called proof—that exceptions have occurred to Colles's law that a mother cannot be infected by her infant when it has inherited syphilis, these exceptions must be so exceedingly rare that for practical purposes they may safely be disregarded. Moreover, there must be weighed against such an extremely small and doubtful risk the very real and great difference which breast-feeding makes in a syphihtic infant's chances of survival. Amongst the causes of death in congenital syphihs during infancy, one of the most frequent is marasmus : it would almost seem as if there were some inherent difficulty of assimilation in these infants at birth ; some of them waste almost from the day they are born, although no other evidence of syphilis may be apparent until wasting is already advanced ; and the marasmus often occurs without any obvious gastro-intestinal disturbance in an infant who is properly fed at the breast. Apart, however, from this tendency to marasmus, there seems to be a special hability also to gastro- intestinal disorders ; a large proportion of the infants who come under treatment for congenital syphihs are brought, not for any specific manifestations, but for persistent digestive disorder in spite of careful feeding. It is therefore all-important that the food should be as easy of assimilation as possible, and for this reason no method of artificial feeding can replace the mother's milk. To deprive the syphihtic infant of his mother's milk may be to deprive him of his chance of hf e. Suckhng, however, can only be done by the mother : no wet-nurse must be allowed to suckle an infant with congenital sypliihs, for however rare infection from congenital syphilis may be, it seems clear that a wet-nurse can be, and in several cases has been, infected by suckhng an infant who had tliis disease. Lastly, I would point out that apart from the marasmus to which I have referred, not only infants but also older children with congenital sypliihs are so often poorly-nourished, pale and ' unwholesome-looking ' even when free from any definite manifestation of the disease, that good food, and perhaps malt and cod-hver oil, sea-air and good hygiene in general, play no unimportant part in the treatment of syphihs in children.