The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases. Charles West

disease had existed in one or other of their parents.[1] Scrofula, which is another disease closely allied to consumption, is hereditary also; and hip disease, disease of the spine, abscesses, and enlarged glands in any members of a family, point to risks for the offspring which should not be forgotten, how much soever mental endowments, personal beauty, or the charms of disposition may be considered, and sometimes reasonably enough, to outweigh them. The same liability exists with reference to epilepsy, insanity, and the whole class of affections of the nervous system. Parents inquire, with no misplaced solicitude, what is her fortune, or what are the pecuniary resources of him to whom they are asked to entrust their son's or daughter's future. Believe me, the question—what is the health of his family, or of hers? is consumption hereditary, or scrofula, or epilepsy, or insanity?—is of far greater moment, and touches much more nearly the future happiness of those we love.

      These two points regard the future parents themselves; but there are other conditions on which the health of children to a great degree depends; and of these the two most important are the dwelling they inhabit, and the food they eat.

I do not refer here to the dwellings of the poor, situated in unhealthy localities, where fresh air does not enter, where the rays of the sun do not penetrate, with defective drainage and imperfect water-supply; but I speak of the nurseries of well-to-do people. 'This will do for our bedroom, and that will make a nice spare room, and that will do for the children,' is what one often hears. Had you rare plants which cost much money to obtain, which needed sunlight, warmth, and air, would you not consider anxiously the position of your conservatory, and take much pains to insure that nothing should be wanting that could help their development, so that you might feast your eyes upon their beauty, or delight yourselves with their fragrance? And yet a room at the top of the house, one of the attics perhaps, is too often destined for the little one and its nurse; or if there are two or three children, one small room is set apart for the day nursery, and a second, probably with a different aspect, for a sleeping room, and so small that it does not furnish the needed five hundred cubic feet of air for each. And as a consequence, the children are ailing, any predisposition in them to hereditary disease is fostered, they have no strength to battle against any acute illness that may befall them, and yet surprise is felt that the doctor is never out of the house.[2]

It is needless to dwell on the hand-feeding of infants as one of the great causes of mortality in infancy, and of sickliness in later life. The statistics of Foundling Hospitals bear sad testimony to the fact of its dangers, and the researches of physicians show that a peculiar form of disease is produced by it, attended by symptoms, and giving rise to appearances after death, peculiar to the form of slow starvation from which the infant has perished. I will add, because it is not generally known, one fresh illustration of the influence of artificial feeding in aggravating the mortality of infants. In Berlin the certificates of death of all infants under the age of one year, are required to state whether the little one had been brought up at the breast, or on some kind or other of artificial food. Of ten thousand children dying under the age of one year, one-fourth had been brought up at the breast, three-fourths by hand.[3]

      It is, as I said in the preface, no part of my plan to enter on any details with reference to the management of children in health. It may, therefore, suffice to have pointed out the four great causes of preventible disease among the wealthier classes of society; namely, the intermarriage of near relatives, the transmission of constitutional taint, the insanitary condition of the dwelling, and the injudicious selection of the food of the infant.

      FOOTNOTES:

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[1] This is the proportion stated in Quain's Dictionary of Medicine, to which the writer, Dr. Theodore Williams, adds that of 1,000 cases in the upper classes 12 per cent. showed direct hereditary predisposition, and 48 per cent. family predisposition.

[2] Many useful suggestions will be found in Mrs. Gladstone's little tract, Healthy Nurseries and Bedrooms, published as one of the Health Exhibition Handbooks.

[3] The actual numbers are 2,628 and 7,646. See Generalbericht ueber das Medizinal-und Sanitätswesen der Stadt Berlin im Jahre 1881. 8vo. Berlin 1883, p. 19.

CHAPTER II.

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THE GENERAL SIGNS OF DISEASE IN INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD.

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      The signs of disease at all ages may be referred to one or other of three great classes: disorder of function, alteration of temperature, complaint of pain.

      In the infant it is the last of these which very often calls attention to the illness from which it is suffering. Cries are the only language which a young baby has to express its distress; as smiles and laughter and merry antics tell without a word its gladness. The baby must be ill, is all that its cries tell one person; another, who has seen much of sick children, will gather from them more, and will be able to judge whether its suffering is in the head, or chest, or stomach. The cries of a baby with stomach-ache are long and loud and passionate; it sheds a profusion of tears; now stops for a moment, and then begins again, drawing up its legs to its stomach; and as the pain passes off, stretches them out again, and with many little sobs passes off into a quiet sleep. If it has inflammation of the chest it does not cry aloud, it sheds no tears, but every few minutes, especially after drawing a deeper breath than before, or after each short hacking cough, it gives a little cry, which it checks apparently before it is half finished; and this, either because it has no breath to waste in cries, or because the effort makes its breathing more painful. If disease is going on in the head, the child utters sharp piercing shrieks, and then between whiles a low moan or wail, or perhaps no sound at all, but lies quiet, apparently dozing, till pain wakes it up again.

      It is not, however, by the cry alone, or by any one sign of disease, that it is possible to judge either of its nature or of its degree, but the mention of this serves merely as an illustration, which anyone can understand, of the different meanings that even a baby's cry will convey to different persons.

      When a child is taken ill, be the disease from which it is about to suffer what it may, there is at once a change from its condition when in health, such as soon attracts the attention even of the least observant. The child loses its appetite, is fretful and soon tired, and either very sleepy or very restless, while most likely it is thirsty, and its skin hotter than natural. In many instances, too, it feels sick or actually vomits, while its bowels are either much purged or very bound. If old enough to talk, it generally complains of feeling ill, or says that it has pain in some part or other, though it is by no means certain that a little child has described rightly the seat of its pain; for it very often says that its head aches or that its stomach aches, just because it has heard people when ill complain of pain in the head or in the stomach. Some of these signs of illness are, of course, absent in the infant, who can describe its feelings even by signs imperfectly; but the baby loses its merry laugh and its cheerful look; it ceases to watch its mother's or its nurse's eye as it was used to do, though it clings to her more closely than ever, and will not be out of her arms even for a moment; and if at length rocked to sleep in her lap, will yet wake up and cry immediately on being placed in its cot again.

      Symptoms such as these are sure to awaken the mother's attention to her child, and the child's