The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases

Vomiting, though by no means a prominent symptom of either of the two very grave conditions of which I have been speaking just now, is yet a very common attendant on all disorders of digestion in early life. It is indeed much more frequent in the infant than in the adult, and the greater irritability of the stomach continues even after the first few months of existence are past, and does not completely cease during the early years of childhood. In every case of vomiting in childhood, therefore, the first question to set at rest is whether it depends on disorder of the digestive system, or whether it heralds the onset of one of the eruptive fevers, or of inflammation of the chest, or of affection of the brain; and in determining this all the directions given when I was speaking of the general symptoms of disease are to be carefully studied. Vomiting often accompanies infantile diarrhœa, even when the food taken cannot be regarded as its occasion; and now and then the stomach, with no obvious exciting cause, suddenly becomes too irritable to retain any food, and this indeed may be the case even though attended by few or no other indications of intestinal disorder. The child in such cases seems still anxious for the breast; but so great is the irritability of the stomach that the milk is either thrown up unchanged immediately after it has been swallowed, or it is retained only for a few minutes, and is then rejected in a curdled state; while each application of the child to the breast is followed by the same result. It will generally be found, when this accident takes place in the previously healthy child of a healthy mother, that it has been occasioned by some act of indiscretion on the part of its mother or nurse. She perhaps has been absent from her nursling longer than usual, and returning tired from a long walk or from some fatiguing occupation, has at once offered it the breast, and allowed it to suck abundantly; or the infant has been roused from sleep before its customary hour, or it has been over-excited or over-wearied at play, or in hot weather has been carried about in the sun without proper protection from its rays.

The infant in whom from any of these causes vomiting has come on, must at once be taken from the breast, and for a couple of hours neither food nor medicine should be given to it. It may then be offered a teaspoonful of cold water; and should the stomach retain this, one or two spoonfuls may be given in the course of the next half-hour. If this is not rejected, a little isinglass may be dissolved in the water, which must still be given by a teaspoonful at a time, frequently repeated; or cold barley-water may be given in the same manner. In eight or ten hours, if no return of vomiting takes place, the experiment may be tried of giving the child its mother's milk, or cows' milk diluted with water, in small quantities from a teaspoon. If the food thus given does not occasion sickness, the infant may in from twelve to twenty-four hours be restored to the breast: with the precaution, however, of allowing it to suck only very small quantities at a time, lest, the stomach being overloaded, the vomiting should again be produced.

In many instances when the sickness has arisen from some accidental cause, such as those above referred to, the adoption of these precautions will suffice to restore the child's health. If, however, other signs of disorder of the stomach or bowels have preceded the sickness, or are associated with it, medicine cannot be wholly dispensed with, and the advice of the doctor must be sought for. Very likely in addition to directing the rules above laid down to be attended to, he may lay a tiny dose of calomel, as a quarter, half or a whole grain on the tongue, which often has a wonderful influence in arresting sickness; while he may further put a small poultice not much bigger than a crown piece, made half of mustard, half of flour, on the pit of the stomach for a few minutes, and may give the child a little saline, with a grain or two of carbonate of soda, and perhaps a drop of prussic acid. These, however, are not remedies to be employed by the mother, but must be prescribed, and their effect watched by the medical attendant.

Sickness, indeed, is not always a solitary symptom unattended by other evidences of disordered digestion, but is sometimes associated with signs of its general impairment, and this may be so serious as to lead to great loss of flesh, and even to end in endangering life. In many instances, however, the child does not lose much flesh though it digests ill, and its symptoms would be troublesome rather than alarming, if it were not that they are often the signs of an unhealthy constitution, out of which in the course of a few months consumption is not infrequently developed. Long-continued indigestion in the infant always warrants anxiety on the part of the parent.

In some of these cases there is complete loss of appetite, the infant caring neither for the breast nor for any other food. It loses the look of health and grows pale and languid, though it may not have any special disorder either of the stomach or of the bowels. It sucks but seldom and is soon satisfied, and even of the small quantity taken, a portion is often regurgitated almost immediately. This state of things is sometimes brought on by a mother's over-anxious care, who, fearful of her infant taking cold, keeps it in a room too hot or too imperfectly ventilated. It follows, also, in delicate infants on attacks of catarrh or of diarrhœa, but it is then for the most part a passing evil which time will cure. In the majority of cases, however, the loss of appetite is associated with evidence of the stomach's inability to digest even the small quantity of food taken, and the bowels are irregular in their action, as well as unhealthy in their secretion. Loss of appetite, too, though a frequent is by no means a constant attendant on infantile indigestion, but is replaced sometimes by an unnatural craving, in which the child never seems so comfortable as when sucking. It sucks much, but the milk evidently does not sit well upon the stomach; for soon after sucking, the child begins to cry and appears to be in much pain until it has vomited. The rejection of the milk is followed by immediate relief; but at the same time by the desire for more food, and the child often can be pacified only by allowing it to suck again. In other cases vomiting is of much less frequent occurrence, and there is neither craving desire for food, nor much pain after sucking; but the infant is distressed by frequent acid or offensive eructations; its breath has a sour or nauseous smell, and its evacuations have a most fœtid odour. The condition of the bowels that exists in connection with these different forms of indigestion is variable. In cases of simple loss of appetite, the debility of the stomach is participated in by the intestines, and constipation is of frequent occurrence, though the evacuations do not always appear unhealthy. In other instances in which the desire for food still continues, the bowels may act with due regularity, but the motions may have a very unnatural appearance. If the child is brought up entirely at the breast, the motions are usually liquid, of a very pale yellow colour, often extremely offensive, and contain shreds of curdled milk, which not having been digested within the stomach, pass unchanged through the whole track of the bowels. In many instances, however, the infant having been observed not to thrive at the breast, arrowroot or other farinaceous food is given to it, which the stomach is wholly unable to digest, and which gives to the motions the appearance of putty or pipe-clay, besmeared more or less abundantly with slime or mucus. The evacuations are often parti-coloured, and sometimes one or two unhealthy motions are followed by others which appear perfectly natural; while attacks of diarrhœa often come on, and the matters discharged are then watery, of a dark dirty green colour, and exceedingly offensive.

Children, like grown persons suffering from indigestion, often continue, as I have already said, to keep up their flesh much better than could be expected, and in many cases grow up to be strong and healthy. Still the condition is one that not merely entails much suffering on the infant, but by its continuance seriously impairs the health, and tends to develop the seeds of any constitutional predisposition to consumptive disease.

In these cases there are many respects in which the mother can most efficiently second the doctor. All causes unfavourable to health must be examined into, and as far as possible removed. It must be seen that the nursery is well ventilated, and that its temperature is not too high; while it will often be found that no remedy is half so efficacious as change of air. Next, it must not be forgotten that the regurgitation of the food is due in great measure to the weakness and consequent irritability of the stomach, and care must therefore be taken not to overload it. If these two points are attended to, benefit may then be looked for from the employment of tonics, and as the general health improves the constipated condition of the bowels, so usual in these cases, will by degrees disappear; while if aperients are needed those simple remedies only should be employed of which I spoke in the first part of this book, and the use of mercurials is not to be resorted to without distinct medical order.

The above mode of treatment is appropriate to cases of what may be termed the indigestion of debility, but a different plan must be adopted in those instances in which it depends on some other cause. The rule, indeed, which limits the quantity of food to be given at one time is no less applicable here, for the rejection of some of the milk may be the result of nothing more than of an effort which nature makes to reduce the work that the stomach has to do within the powers of that organ. But when, notwithstanding that due attention is paid to this important point, uneasiness is always produced by taking food, and is not relieved till after the lapse of some twenty minutes, when vomiting takes place, or when the infant suffers much from flatulence and from frequent acid or nauseous eructations, it is clear that the symptoms are due to something more than the mere feebleness of the system.

It is not, however, the mere fact that the child vomits its food, or of the milk so vomited being rejected in a coagulated state, which proves that the stomach is disordered, but it is the fact of firmly coagulated milk being rejected with much pain, and after the lapse of a considerable interval from the time of its being taken, which warrants this conclusion. The coagulation of the curd is the first change which the milk of any animal undergoes when introduced into the stomach. The coagulum of human milk is soft and flocculent, and not so thoroughly separated from the other elements of the fluid, as the firm hard coagulum or curd of cow's milk becomes from the whey in which it floats. In a state of health the abundantly secreted gastric juice speedily redissolves the chief part of the curd in the stomach, while when it has passed into the intestine the alkaline bile which there becomes mixed with it, completes its solution, and converts the whole into a fluid which closely resembles one of the chief elements of the blood, is consequently very easily taken up by the minute vessels whose office it is to do so, and thus supplies with nourishment the whole body.

Milk tends, however, to undergo changes spontaneously, which produce its coagulation, and the occurrence of these changes is greatly favoured by a moderately high temperature, such as that which exists in the stomach. But the alterations of the fluid that accompany this spontaneous coagulation are very different from those which are brought about by the vital processes of digestion. An acid becomes formed within it, and the acid thus produced has none of the solvent power of gastric juice, but by its presence impedes rather than favours digestion. Every nurse is aware that a very slight acidity of the milk will suffice to give an infant vomiting, stomach ache, and diarrhœa, and the result must be much the same whether fermentation had begun in the milk before it was swallowed, or whether it commences afterwards, in consequence of the disordered condition of the stomach, and the absence of a healthy secretion of gastric juice.

The nature of the food is the first point that requires attention in the management of these cases of infantile dyspepsia. If the child had been fed on cow's milk the symptoms may be due to the gastric juice not having been able to dissolve the curd, which you will remember is much firmer than that of human milk as well as twice as abundant. In this case the substitution of asses' milk, the employing whey either entirely or in part instead of milk, and the adding white of egg in order to present the elements of the curd in a more easily digestible form, may all be tried with advantage. Sometimes children refuse whey; and then a mixture of cream and veal broth, more or less diluted either with water or with the white decoction, may be given instead. The addition of soda, potash, chalk or lime water to milk before it is given is also of service, since it not only prevents the occurrence of fermentation, but also renders the curd of cow's milk more easily soluble.

The indiscriminate and over-free employment of these alkalies, however, as nursery remedies is by all means to be avoided, for the symptoms of indigestion for which a grown person if suffering would seek the advice of a skilful doctor require his help no less when the patient is a child. When acids will be of service in promoting the secretion of the gastric juice, when pepsine will be likely to be of use, when stimulants such as a little brandy, when aromatics to get rid of flatulence, opiates to relieve pain or check diarrhœa, or when an occasional mercurial, or some other remedy may be of use by stimulating the liver to increased action, are questions which I would not advise any mother to try to answer for herself. Much care and pains and knowledge and experience are often required by the doctor to enable him to answer them correctly.

I must not leave the consideration of the ailments of the digestive organs in early infancy without some notice of that affection of the mouth popularly known as thrush to which an exaggerated importance was once attached as the supposed cause of those symptoms of disordered health, of which it is in reality only the accompaniment. Still it is a sign of such grave disorder that it needs a careful study.

Thrush.—If you examine the mouth of a young infant, in whom the attempt at hand-feeding is not turning out well, you will often observe its lining to be beset with numerous small white spots, that look like little bits of curd lying upon its surface, but which on a more attentive examination are found to be so firmly adherent to it as not to be removed without some difficulty, when they leave the surface beneath it a deep red colour, and now and then bleeding slightly. These specks appear upon the inner surface of the lips, especially near the angles of the mouth, on the inside of the cheeks, and upon the tongue, where they are more numerous at the tip and edges than towards the centre. They are likewise seen upon the gums, though less frequently and in smaller numbers. When they first appear they are usually of a circular form, scarcely larger than a small pin's head; but after having existed for a day or two, some of the spots become three or four times as large, while at the same time they in general lose something of their circular form. By degrees the small white crusts fall off of their own accord, leaving the surface where they were seated redder than before; a colour which gradually subsides, as with the infant's improved health the mouth returns to its natural condition. If the improvement is tardy the white specks may be reproduced and again detached several times before the mouth resumes its healthy aspect. In the worst cases the specks coalesce, and coat the mouth as though lined with a membrane which is usually of a yellowish-white tint instead of having the dead white colour of the separate spots. Even here, however, though the surface is very red, it scarcely bleeds if the deposit is removed from it gently and with care.

The popular notion that when the deposit of thrush appears not only in the mouth, but also at the edge of the bowel, it has passed through the child is altogether erroneous. The lining membrane of the bowel indeed is red, inflamed, and presents those conditions to which I have already referred when speaking of the atrophy of hand-fed children, but the actual deposit of thrush can take place only where there exists an appropriate structure for its formation, and that is to be found, not in the bowels, but only at the inlets and outlets of the digestive canal. The actual deposit at the outlet of the bowel is indeed exceptional, though the edges are often red and sore from the irritation produced by the acrid motions, and this irritation sometimes extends to the skin over the lower part of the baby's person, which becomes rough, and covered with a blush of redness.

Thrush in the child is of far less serious import than in the grown person. In the latter it indicates the existence of some very serious, almost hopeless disease, and hence it is that we meet with it in the last stages of dysentery, cancer, and consumption. In the child a slight attack of thrush may occur from causes which are by no means serious, and may disappear under the use of simple means, such as I have already described when speaking of the troubles of digestion in early infancy.

While in any case it must rest with the doctor to regulate as he best knows how the constitutional treatment of the condition on which the thrush depends, it must be for the mother to see that appropriate local measures are adopted. One point of considerable moment, and to which less care than it deserves is usually paid, is the removing from the mouth, each time after the infant has been fed, of all remains of the milk or other food. For this purpose whenever the least sign of thrush appears, the mouth should be carefully wiped out with a piece of soft rag dipped in a little warm water every time after food has been given. Supposing the attack to be but slight this precaution will of itself suffice in many instances to remove all traces of the affection in two or three days. If, however, there is much redness of the mouth, or if the specks of thrush are numerous, some medicated application is desirable.

The once popular honey and borax is not the best application, and this for a reason which I will at once explain. The secretion of the mouth in infants is acid, disease increases this acidity; and it has been found that this acid state is not merely favourable to the increase of thrush, but also to the development between the specks of thrush of a sort of membrane formed by a peculiar microscopic growth, of whose existence, just as of that of the phylloxera which destroys the vine, or the muscardine which kills the silkworm, we were ignorant till brought to light by recent scientific research.

You will therefore at once see why saccharine substances, apt as they are to pass into a state of fermentation, are not suitable, and why it is better to employ a solution of—

Borax, twenty grains

Glycerine, one teaspoonful

Water, an ounce.

Now and then the use once or twice a day in addition of a very weak solution of caustic, as two grains of lunar caustic to an ounce of water, in bad cases is necessary; but of this it must be left to the doctor to decide.

Teething.—The transition is a very natural one by which we pass from the study of the dangers and difficulties which attend the feeding and rearing of young infants, to those which accompany teething.

The time of teething is looked forward to by most mothers with undisguised apprehension, nurses attribute to it the most varied forms of constitutional disturbance, and doctors constantly hold forth to anxious parents the expectation that their child will have better health when it has cut all its teeth. The time of teething, too, is in reality one of more than ordinary peril9, though why it should be so is not always rightly understood. It is a time of most active development, a time of transition from one mode of being to another, in respect of all those important functions by whose due performance the body is nourished and built up.

The error which has been committed with reference to this matter, consists not in overrating the hazard of the time, when changes so important are being accomplished, but in regarding only one of the manifestations—though that indeed is the most striking one of the many important ends which nature is then labouring to bring about. A child in perfect health usually cuts its teeth at a certain time and in a certain order, just as a girl at a certain age begins to show signs of approaching womanhood; and at length attains it with but slight inconvenience or discomfort. The two processes, however, have this in common, that during both, constitutional disturbance is more common, and serious diseases are more frequent than at other times, and the cause in both lies far deeper than the outward manifestation.

The great changes which nature is constantly bringing about around us and within us are the result of laws operating silently but unceasingly; and hence it is that in her works we see little of the failure which often disappoints human endeavours, or of the dangers which often attend on their accomplishment. Thus when her object is to render the child no longer dependent on the mother for its food, she begins to prepare for this long beforehand. The first indication of it is furnished by the greatly increased activity of the salivary glands, which during the first few months of existence have scarcely begun to perform their function, a fact which accounts for the tendency to dryness of the tongue of the young infant under the influence of very trivial ailments. About the fourth or fifth month, this condition undergoes a marked alteration; the mouth is now found continually full of saliva, and the child is constantly drivelling; but no other indication appears of the approach of the teeth to the surface, except that the ridge of the gums sometimes becomes broader than it was before. No further change may take place for many weeks; and it is generally near the end of the seventh month before the first teeth make their appearance. The middle cutting teeth of the lower jaw are in most instances the first to pierce the gum; next the middle cutting teeth of the upper jaw; then usually the side cutting teeth of the lower jaw, and lastly, the corresponding ones of the upper. This, however, is not quite invariable, for sometimes all the cutting teeth in one jaw precede in their appearance any of those in the other. The first four grinding teeth next succeed, and often without any very definite order as to whether those of the upper or of the lower jaw are first visible, though in the majority of instances the lower are the first to appear. The four eye teeth follow, and lastly, the remaining four grinding teeth, which complete the set of first, or as they are often called, milk teeth.

We must not, however, picture to ourselves this process as going on uninterruptedly until completed—a mistake into which parents often fall, whose anxiety respecting their children is excited by observing that after several teeth have appeared in rapid succession, the process appears to come to a standstill. Nature has so ordered it that teething which begins at the seventh or eighth month, shall not be completed until the twenty-fourth or thirtieth; and has doubtless done so in some measure with the view of diminishing the risk of constitutional disturbance that might be incurred if the evolution of the teeth went on without a pause. As a rule the two lower central incisors or cutting teeth make their appearance in the course of a week; six weeks or two months often intervene before the central upper incisors pierce the gum, but they are in general quickly followed by the lateral incisors. A pause of three or four months most frequently occurs before we see the first grinding teeth, another of equal length previous to the appearance of the eye teeth, and then another still longer before the last grinding teeth are cut.

Though a perfectly natural process, teething is almost always attended with some degree of suffering. This, however, is not always the case, for sometimes we discover that an infant has cut a tooth, who yet had shown no signs of discomfort, nor any indication that teething was commencing, with the exception of an increased flow of saliva. More frequently indeed, the mouth becomes hot, and the gums look tumid, tense, and shining, while the exact position of each tooth is marked, for some time before its appearance, by the prominence of the gum; or the eruption of the teeth is preceded by much redness, and great heat of the mouth with profuse flow of saliva, and even with little painful ulcers of the edge of the tongue, or of the inner surface of either lip. With either of these conditions the child is feverish, fretful, and cries from time to time with pain, while at the same time the bowels often are relaxed, or the child coughs and wheezes as if it had caught cold.