SIGNS OF STARVATION.
A child may be apparently well and hearty at birth, may thrive even at the breast for a few months; then all at once seem to fail. It may be fed on whatever is ordered if not at the breast from the first; yet barely live on for months, whining, drooping, and struggling, as it were, to live. Such patients lay awake, listen, and watch the motion of passing objects; when spoken to, will try to indicate something, look pitiful, act intelligent concerning wearing apparel or toys. In fact such a child is termed cross. It will cry after everything it sees, and that it don’t see; will slap things, such as cake or crackers, out of your hand. Nothing offered is welcomed as a relish. The bowels are generally loose, the urine copious; yet in many cases the water is voided in large quantities, while the bowels are dry. The eyes retain their brightness, as if to invite attention to the fact, “I would thrive if I had what I need.” The patient may drink half a gallon a day without the least sign of satisfaction.
Starvation may begin with the fœtal development either from lack of nourishment from the system of the parent, or by reason of repeated attempts at abortion; either of which is sufficient to blunt the vitality of the germ. Such children are likely to “hang on,” perhaps till the period of youth, and with good care may arrive to manhood or womanhood. The most doubtful cases are those that have a dry cough, eat a great deal, yet are never content, bloat at certain times, and grow more stupid; the body becoming a mere skeleton, and with difficulty kept warm. The new being is dependent upon the state of the parent’s blood from the moment of conception till weaned from the breast. If the food upon which a child is fed is the cause of the trouble, it should be changed as soon as possible. If from other causes there are medicines which can in a measure supply the needed basis. But generally the real cause is not known or even suspected until too late to repair the injury, and the patient dies after having exhibited all signs of consumption. Children born of consumptive parents may come out quite bright in some branches of thought, yet be quite delicate, seldom passing the flower of youth in life.
I feel incompetent to decide whether a consumptive mother had better nurse her child, and thus fasten the germ of disease upon it, with a view to prolonging her own life; or whether it is best for her to yield to her fate, and substitute some different food for the chance of her child’s life.
SECTION II.
SYMPTOMS OF EMPTINESS OR STARVATION, WHICH MAY LEAD TO CHOLERA.
If, as heretofore mentioned, the solid or nutritive principle of the milk has been withheld from the babe by adulteration in any way, the blood becomes watery, the fat cells cannot develop, the tissues that hold the fluid with which to moisten the parts dries away, and the flesh becomes soft or skinny. The milk may be nutritive, too, and yet for some reason fail to mix with the juices in the stomach so as to insure healthy blood.
These facts, however, are seldom found out by a casual medical attendant until the powers of digestion are too weak to derive much benefit from another kind of diet. Besides, the expense of the articles mostly ordered by physicians renders a trial almost out of the question. There are, however, many articles of nourishment obtainable, which, if perseveringly administered, will do much to assist in building up the little frame.
The most marked of the signs that may end in cholera are vomiting, dulness of the eyes, rolling the head, as if to rock, spitefully crying when taken up to be changed, and begging for everything, as they say; also crying, if old enough, for the very things no one thinks it should have. If a child could have some of what it smells and craves, at such times, no doubt but that recovery would commence. But a general languidness of the whole system, and a loathing of the sight of a bottle or its accustomed food, shows signs of certain destruction. In the last stage the child screams faintly, starts at the sound of almost anything; sometimes the breathing is scarcely perceptible. The discharges from the bowels are seldom white and frothy, as in the last stage of acute cholera; owing, perhaps, to the fact that the diet has been continued in the former, whereas in the latter all food is generally suspended during treatment, except it be fluids of the mildest nature; unlike in the last stage of consumption, when the little sufferer seems to watch every movement of its nearest friend, sometimes rising half way up to look about, then falling back exhausted, it now lies quiet.
It may be remarked just here that infants affected with inanition or starvation, consumption and cholera, most invariably retain to the last hour their instinct to suck, whether it be of the bottle or of the breast. It is a well-known fact that infants who were nearly destroyed by starvation from being fed on poor milk by hand, have been successfully raised by being put on breast-milk.
SECTION III.
CHOLERA INFANTUM.—INFANTILE CHOLERA.
We will now consider that much-dreaded disease termed “cholera infantum.” I have seen babes attacked with it from two weeks old and upwards. A child may be nursing at the breast or feeding from a bottle, when all of a sudden it leaves off, and looks languidly about in a comparatively stupid and pitiful manner; the eyes lose their lustre, are rolled about as if not noticing any particular object. Fluids are thrown up as soon as swallowed; passages from the bowels are frequent, though many times but a speck in the centre of a wet napkin, most of the report being wind. The matter discharged at first is likely to show in some measure the cause of the irritation.
After the acidity has been corrected by medicines, unlike a simple looseness, the purging and vomiting of infantile cholera still continue, showing conclusively the inactivity of the internal organs of digestion. In some cases the remedies that are scientifically administered pass out into the napkin unchanged; in others, they seem to lodge somewhere and dry up. The chances are always considered favorable to recovery if the remedies have a desirable action.
A child may drool or throw up its food at any time, yet be quite healthy. If a babe is sucking, and the mother indulges in a mixed or meat and vegetable diet too early, the first passages after it is taken sick will show signs of heat, fermentation and inflammation; they will either be of a deep yellow, or more or less green, and slimy. In such instances it is always advisable to take the infant from the breast for a while and feed it on arrow-root boiled in water, till the acidity is corrected; then in milk, no sugar being added, alternating with gum-arabic water. The mother, or wet-nurse, having been put under strict diet for a week, might with propriety resume nursing. Robust, perfectly developed children are apt to exhibit considerable vitality through the different phases of the disease; but as far as my experience has been, they succumb to the worst more quickly than the more delicate-appearing.
As the disease progresses the little sufferer will thrust its fingers in its mouth, as if to intimate hunger or dryness, and gag, as though something was sticking in the throat. The hands and arms are the most active. The lower extremities are seldom moved from one position; and when moved by any one, they are quickly reversed. Every movement of the body, in bathing or changing, is followed by a discharge from the bowels. These discharges vary in consistence even before any medicine has been given. After the bowels have been purged, as is recommended by most physicians to begin with, the discharges from the bowels may run off frequently, and in small quantities, depositing in the napkin a whitish, frothy fluid, which settles down to a chalky substance, giving out the smell of lime. If such emissions continue, they will effect a rapid destruction; or they may have the same appearance from the beginning if the internal organs have been previously rendered weak from starvation, or rather where the food has been but little better than water sweetened; and, too, these frothy emissions greatly chafe the parts if they are allowed to remain soiled.
The tongue is dry and stiff, as a general thing, throughout the disease. The body, with the exception of the belly, is dry and cool. The mouth is apt to be hot from the beginning, a sign remarked by mothers who have suckled babes with cholera; in the last stage, the disposition to sleep, but start at the least noise; the mouth lying half open, the intelligent attempts to suck; the decrease of the discharges from the bowels; the cessation of retching; the sinking in of the features; the nervous grasping, as if to catch some passing object; jerking of the body, and moaning, may be looked upon as unfavorable signs.
It is a great mistake to conclude that infants will have cholera if weaned early, or if they are to be artificially nursed. The fear comes from persons having been so educated within the last half century.
All kinds of preparations are advertised and eagerly sought for baby diet; as if the internal organs of babes were entirely different from what they were before, and must needs be supplied with something more supernatural than those of the adult. The symptoms of cholera are by no means uniform. For instance, they may be cut short, or aggravated by overdosing, before the facts in the case are made known. Thus, if paregoric, laudanum, or any alcoholic carminatives are habitually put in the drink, the most marked signs will be the smell of the breath, the presence of constipation, stupor and sinking in of the features more or less, with very little vomiting. Such cases, no doubt, are seldom admitted, the victims being dead, or nearly so, when medical aid is called.
SECTION IV.
GENERAL TREATMENT OF CHOLERA INFANTUM, MEDICAL AND DOMESTIC.
Unfortunately for many children, it is usually in the last stage of the disease that a physician is consulted. Probably any number of palliatives have been given with good intentions and high hopes of success. For one, the old cleaning-out remedy, so much thought of by old ladies, and doctors not a few,—castor-oil. Whatever may be deemed as proper treatment, it should be remembered that nothing short of the most untiring vigilance on the part of the attendant, guided by Divine aid, can bring success in raising a child on whom cholera has fastened its blighting fangs. Yet what encouragement it is to know that by those means it can be saved.
My course for the last fifteen years has been to first ascertain, if possible, the cause of cholera, and have it removed; also particularly to inquire how long it has been since the child has been noticed to fail in the effort to suck; then as to the color and frequency of the discharges. I have never known, through my observations of over twenty-three years, any better corrector of acidity, sourness in the human bowels, than calcined magnesia. After giving from two to three grains every hour, or according to the degree of acidity, until it is all apparently changed, then, as cautiously as needful, I proceed to quiet the motion of the bowels, as in case of purging within the month, by the use of mixture No. 1, which if put up by a regular chemist, and given according to directions, can be no more objectionable because inserted in this little book than thousands of other recipes scattered over the community by tons in expensive books.
No. 1, R. Mixtura Creatæ, preperata, zj.—Chalk Mixture, Aquæ Cinnam. zss.—Cinnamon Water. Add Opii Tinct. Gutta vj.—Laudanum.
Shake well before using. Dose—A small teaspoonful after each stool. Increase the dose according to age of patient. Of course it is not expected that the inexperienced would attempt to administer anything other than domestic remedies, unless put up according to the rules of art.
For a decided case of cholera, it is best to begin with half a teaspoonful of the mixture; which, by the by, should be sucked down by the patient very slowly, in order to have it remain on the stomach. No time should be wasted listening to the old story of working off a bowel complaint; few are the adults that ever have survived the experiment, much less the weakly infant. Deaths from cholera cannot possibly be so numerous in consequence of the discharges having been checked too soon, for the usual precaution is not to arrest them; so they are let to go on increasing, till all hopes of contracting the vessels are vain. It would be well in all cases before administering Mixture No. 1, to fill a flannel bag with hops, wring it out of warm, salt water and lay it over the chest and belly, re-wetting every two hours; this done will alone sometimes prove successful.
When the mouth remains dry and hot, a little cool water, sucked slowly from a spoon, does seem to revive the little sufferer, and I have no reason to doubt its efficacy in abating the suffering, if not the disease. Stimulant astringents are what is needed after the passages are checked. The least mite of Nature’s stimulant—common salt—laid on the back part of the tongue, will excite a flow of saliva, and greatly assist in removing a sort of hair-worm which has been noticed to infest the throat in some patients. When there is a continuance of vitality, and the passages continue to be green, or tinged with blood, and external cooling applications, as of flaxseed poultices, have been well tried, an effort should be made to stimulate the liver; this is very likely to be the case where the age and constitution of the child is sufficient to permit the disease to run on for quite a while. Hydrargium chloridum-calomel, is sometimes the most reliable drug that can be used to correct that. This drug is unsafe in the hands of the inexperienced, but quick and safe when under the guidance of medical skill. The dose for a child six months old should never exceed one-sixteenth of a grain, or one grain in sixteen hours, followed by a sip of warm milk.
The nourishment during this time should consist of the breast-milk, if possible; if not, arrow-root boiled in milk and gum-water, fed from a spoon twice a day, or oftener. But either should always be given about a half hour after any medicine, unless otherwise directed. Cold water should never be allowed to a patient while medicine is being administered, the nature of which is unknown. Light, air, sponging the body with warm salt water, a change of clothing or bedding, each tends to stimulate the pores, quench thirst, and give tone to the whole system. Thin flour-gruel acts as a pasty lining to the entrails. After the irritation has ceased, great care is required to prevent a relapse; therefore in all cases when the breast-milk cannot be obtained, the various vegetable astringents should be relied on to build up the muscles, the different grains, as corn-meal, starch and oatmeal, given often but in small quantities, will build up the fat cells. If, after the liver has been acted upon, the green stools do not cease, and there seem to be a general weakness of the digestive organs, the juice of the blackberry, raspberry, or whortleberry, will, in most cases, effect a cure; also, the rinds of ripe peaches boiled in milk till well done, strained, and given when cool—a teaspoonful five or six times during the day, and about as often at night—is excellent. The effect of either of these remedies should be closely watched, as by their astringent nature they might induce constipation.
With a view to the comfort of the sick one, and the convenience of the nurse, it is better to prepare a bed of some light material, on which the patient can lie with its body flexed. Too often the little creature is forced to lie in a narrow place, or more frequently on the lap, in one position, till it would seem as if it would be paralyzed. There should be two sets of bedding in order to expedite recovery. The material should consist of goods that could be easily washed, and kept clean. It is essential, too, that flannel be worn by the sick one; but it is a sad mistake to imagine that flannel clothes do not need changing as often as cotton ones.
When I have suggested a bed for sick infants, some grandmas have thought me cruel. But in such critical cases as the one in question, a few moments’ trotting and rolling on the lap might undo all that it had taken weeks to do. Should the stomach become settled, but the lower bowels remain rather weak and liable to looseness, and there is no fever present, I think much of the burnt brandy in small doses. I prepare it in the following manner: Take a wineglassful of the best brandy, one tablespoonful of refined sugar, dissolve it well, then pour it in a shallow dish and set fire to it with a lighted paper, not a match; when the blue flame is off it is fit for use, and should be put in a clean vial and labelled. Of this, I give to a child six weeks old and upward, six drops in a little water, say about three times within twelve hours. To one six months and upward, I give ten to fifteen drops twice a day. This warms up the stomach and stimulates the digestive fluid glands to action. After the brandy has had the desired effect, a speedy recovery may be hoped for. The bathing, nourishing diet, quietness, and, above all, patience, need to be continued with greater zeal when recovery is apparent. The recovery from cholera is probable only when the surroundings are favorable; it is doubtful where the locality is densely inhabited, the disease prevalent, and where there is a lack of means to provide ample care and nourishment. Patients recovering from a disease like cholera, which so undermines the nervous system, require a deal of determination to prevent the undoing of what has been done by catering to their whims.
CHAPTER XV.
THE CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF CHOLERA INFANTUM.
It has been argued, authoritatively, no doubt, that the causes of cholera infantum are, poor milk, bad air arising from old water-soaked cellars, of tenement houses, or when it affects those of all conditions in life, the rich, the poor, the black and the white,—its cause is said to be in some atmospherical phenomena. I think the last mentioned might be reconsidered, since it appears, from noticing the health records, that mortalities from this disease have increased in extremely warm weather only in proportion to the influx of emigrants.
If poor or adulterated milk were the cause, there should be an entire absence of the disease at present, since such stringent efforts are now put forth to punish the wretch who dares adulterate the milk he sells.
Quite enough has been published of late concerning the adulteration of milk by putting in saltpetre, chalk, glucose, anotta, and other ingredients for the purpose of increasing the density, while water is added to increase the quantity. Admitting these shameful facts, have they not been practised long enough for the news to have reached the ears of every housewife in America? Why, I have been hearing those reports at different times for forty years. With these facts, then, so generally known, why do people water the milk they buy, and depend on it for the support and nourishment of infants? There is trouble somewhere. Children have been successfully raised on milk from animals, both in city and country, at all seasons of the year, in hot or cold climates; and many thousands of aged mothers to-day, could doubtless advise young women in the matter of baby raising, did they not settle down in the thought that the young people are getting all such knowledge along with their great facilities for education. Oh, how sadly mistaken have many thousands gone to their long home!
The management of cholera infantum is not to be coveted; the best of all is to know how to prevent it. I sincerely believe that the greater number of cases of cholera are induced by the unnatural custom of preparing a bottle of food, and putting the child in a position to sleep while it sucks from it. Where is the woman or man who can sleep and eat at the same time? The mode of preparing it is generally putting a little milk with a quantity of water, and a little sugar, into a half-pint bottle—if the babe is only a few days old—and this is kept close to its warm body for hours, or what is just as bad, re-warmed every time it is suspected that the baby is hungry.
Pure milk needs no watering; it is simply converted into slops by so doing. It contains naturally sugar, butter, lime, and all that is required for the nourishment of the young.
The saliva of the glands of the mouth and the juices of the stomach are as fully able to dilute and separate the life principles of milk for a babe, as they are to prepare solid food for the maintenance of the adult. We eat a beefsteak in its purity, risking the after effects; were there more ventures in administering pure food to helpless infants, no doubt but there would soon appear a change in the physique of our young men and women.
To insure a healthy meal, an infant should invariably be fed with care before laying it down from the very first day of its attempt to suck from a bottle, for the following reasons:—
As the babe dozes, its breath goes down the tube; the heat and churning motion together separate the butter globules from the fluid so that they cannot get through the holes, unless, as is often the case, the holes are made too large, for some selfish convenience. And by this latter means the danger of strangulation becomes more imminent if the child is left alone. Scores of times have I seen the infant tugging away between naps, for hours, trying to get what it should have finished in less than twenty or thirty minutes, and been sleeping soundly.
Numbers of them cry half the night, or are pacified by having the rubber nipple of a filthy-smelling sucking-bottle continually stuck in the mouth. Thus some babes are literally worn out sucking, trying to get a bare subsistence. Even if an infant nurses from the breast, it is wrong to put off suckling it till the powers are almost overcome by sleep. While we are aware that its breath cannot go into the mamma, the liability to strangulation is none the less apparent.
There can be no more important duties to perform in the capacity of housekeeping than that of caring for the helpless babe. Women doctors, or, more properly speaking, doctresses of medicine, although usually treated with less courtesy by doctors, are, nevertheless, by them considered to be in their proper sphere in the confinement-room and nursery. While I feel under no obligations to them for their charity, I must admit their honesty and truthfulness in the matter; for surely woman cannot fill a single position in the world so freighted with material, out of which the moral and physical condition of humanity can be affected either for good or evil.
CHAPTER XVI.
CONVENIENT METHODS FOR RAISING INFANTS WITHOUT THE BREAST.
A small bottle holding an ounce, for the first, should be in readiness; a smooth round hole made in the cork, through which to put a quill; the whole to be well covered with a strong soft linen, the edges of which should be hemmed and securely tied under the lip of the bottle. This constituted a sucking-bottle of fifty years ago. The modern rubber tube and nipple, if composed of healthy material, removed from the mouth and washed as soon as possible after using, may do as well. If a child is allowed to sleep all it naturally inclines to, four ounces of milk or two of cream will suffice it during the day, say from seven or eight o’clock in the morning until six in the evening. From that time until bed-time, say nine or ten o’clock, half as much. After ten, the feeding should be as seldom as will allow of comfort. In this way, one pint of milk or half a pint of pure cream will be sufficient to last a babe of from one to four weeks old, a whole day, allowing the cream to be increased to nearly a pint by watering. The quantity should be increased gradually, while the number of meals during the night should decrease. By these means a babe will soon cease to be any trouble after bed hours. Only remember that it has nerves, through which it is supplied with feelings.
A small bottle insures renewal of the food, for positively the same milk that a child has tried to draw from a bottle for any length of time is not fit to be re-warmed or offered to it again; and if persisted in, will act as a slow poison, which may develop into cholera at any period of infantile existence. Again, if milk flows evenly, the butter globules do not form in the bottle. If the milk flows too fast into the child’s mouth, the healthful benefits of a meal is lost.
I have often seen mothers force, with apparent anger, great spoonfuls down the throats of their babes; perhaps such would think this cruel if done by a nurse or overburdened servant-girl.
If a child has cold in the head, so that the nostrils are stopped, means should be used at once to clear them. No one can swallow properly with the nostrils stopped up. To remove the cause daily will prevent those sickening accumulations. A strict attention to cleanliness, and frequent applications of sweet oil, or lard, or goose oil, with a feather, is all that is wanting to prevent so many cases of sore noses, terminating in the entire loss of smell, and not unfrequently the destruction of the soft bones of the nose, or even the cause of cancer. Feeding during the night should be discontinued as soon as possible, as it is then that mistakes of giving the food too hot or too cold are liable to occur. Night feeding may only be avoided by encouraging babes to keep awake during the evening. But if they must be put to sleep early in the evening, as a rule, to suit some one’s convenience, it may be expected that, as a rule, they will wake up just when other people are sleepy, and desire some notice. Infants from three months old and upward will thrive well on a pint and a half of milk a day, but will get on much faster if fed with rolled compound cracker and milk during the day. It is needful to give some babes fluids only, while others starve on them. It is the continual emptiness that causes many children to fret and whine; for whatever they smell, cooking excites their appetites more or less as they grow in intelligence. And, too, children take appetites from their parents in a marked degree. As a doctress, I never could feel it justifiable to direct any woman to wean her babe on account of any conceited inability on her part to suckle it.
I knew a lady whose infant of two weeks was taken suddenly ill while nursing. A doctor was sent for, and when he was informed by the mother that her milk was too rich for the babe, he at once advised her to wean it. What more, think you, could have been expected with a diet of soft boiled eggs for breakfast, custards for dinner, and wines or ales at night? Surely if women ask no questions of the doctors, no answers can be given. It does seem too bad to punish the child for the faults of the parent. Eggs, like fish, may act like sure poison to the milk of a nursing woman. The continued dry belly-ache or wind colic so much fretted over by old ladies in the past, was but a sequence of the custom of feeding lying-in women on wine custards. During the time of those baby afflictions it seldom entered the mind of either nurse or doctor what caused the almost universal three months’ “belly-ache” of infants. Articles that may not perceptibly affect the mother or wet-nurse, as the case may be, may prove certain death to the sucking babe.
Infants should never be obliged to lie over their accustomed hours of rising. If necessity demands this, however, there can be far more gained by taking up, cleaning, exercising, and giving them a fresh supply of food. It is not that too much sleep may be enjoyed, but that the condition in which it is taken should warrant the refreshment needed to build up the new being.
Soft bones, enlarged joints, inverted feet, flattened back-heads, sickening sores, dropsy, blindness, and numerous ills have befallen infants from the thoughtless practice of letting them lie too much in soiled clothes, and being insufficiently fed. In the matter of early rising, the farmer’s child has the advantage of the city child. In the country a babe is looked upon as one of the family, with rights that men are bound to respect; but in the city it is, “Wait dear, till Johnny comes home from school.”
There may appear small white scales or patches on the tongue and inner surface of the mouth. This is commonly called “thrush.” It is usually caused by too great heat, either of surroundings or diet. Sugar in large quantities will create it in some babes. This complaint may run on to an alarming extent, but yields readily to mild treatment timely applied. It not unfrequently happens that, during the presence of apthæ in the mouth, the back passage becomes sore, or presents much the same appearance. The thrush is then said by old ladies to have gone through the child’s bowels. This can hardly be a fact, since the whole trouble disappears readily upon removing the cause.
I have seen it upon the edges and under-surface of the eyelids, in babes that are allowed to sleep where it is generally very close, with the face covered over, or closely nestled to the breast of the mother. The treatment should be cooling. Calcined magnesia in from three to five-grain doses daily, for a week or two, and gently washing the scales over once a day with sugar and water, will, if persisted in, effect a cure. Giving “baby just a taste of everything mamma eats,” is no doubt a frequent cause of this distressing complaint.
If the appetite fails in a child, and there is no perceptible cause, and the mouth is dry and hot for a time, it will do no harm to touch the front edge of the tongue with a mite of table-salt. One or two trials will suffice to set the saliva flowing, then with a little coaxing and proper food the appetite will return. I may have digressed somewhat, but as apthæ is frequently accompanied by diarrhœa, I deem it well to guard against fear and loss of hope that might ensue from its being mistaken for cholera. In any case of vomiting or purging of infants, great caution is required not to give all kinds of palliative suggested by incomers; this is “going it blind,” so to speak. Cholera is a terrible disease, and should be subdued as speedily as possible. At best it leaves its merciless traces throughout the remainder of life; the victim being frequently annoyed by choleric pains, indigestion, nervousness and cough. To sum up all, the causes of cholera infantum are movable unless fixed by some perceptible atmospherical pressure. The causes of cholera are no doubt overlooked by the major portion of a community where its ravages from time to time have been the greatest, and consequently no efforts are put forth in a general way to prevent a repetition of its visits. Even where the conditions of the atmosphere may give rise to cholera, its force can be modified, and the number of fatalities lessened. I have frequently been asked if cholera is contagious; in answer, I can safely say, it is not, as a disease; but like causes will produce like effects, in the same locality, and at the same time. In regard to the fumes of carbolic acid, chloride of lime, sulphur, and the like, as disinfectants, I believe that they are all decidedly depressing, and against the speedy recovery of cholera patients if used in immediate contact. The removal from a crowded district in time of an apparent epidemic is decidedly commendable. It is well known that poverty, wretchedness, and crime favor an increase of mortality from this disease. Yet the prospects of thousands remain the same year after year.
Strange ’tis, but true; in all this vast American domain, is there not room for the welfare of God’s moving images? In the city of Richmond, Va., the heat is much more constant in midsummer than in Boston, Mass. Yet of the three hundred visits among the most forsaken poor of the former city, infantile cholera is comparatively rare, and from July 15, 1877, to Oct. 30, of the same year, I found but one case of cholera from starvation; that being a case where the parent had to be out all day, while it fed from a bottle or sucked on something. Whatever saved many others in like situation, it is beyond my power to tell. There would no doubt be more numerous fatalities with children in warm climates if it was the almost universal custom to feed them on slops; but on the contrary, where they are not at the breast, among the laboring classes at least, they are fed on what is convenient for the rest of the family; and although many times the fare is decidedly objectionable, the Lord crowns the efforts for good with success.
Going South, as I did, a teetotaller, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the freed people were no more intemperate than any other would be if placed in like circumstances; perhaps not so much so as many of those who could better understand how, when freedom came, all of the necessaries of life were speedily cut off from them, but where rum and ruin were, they could find an open door. Instead of setting out a decanter and glasses, as was the custom in the days of slavery (according to all accounts), I noticed a delicacy, lest they might be suspected of wrong-doing. In order to encourage the impression for reform, whenever an opportunity offered, I would say that children have grown weaker every generation in families that have indulged in the use of rum and tobacco.
Frugality is advisable; looking to securing a home in the outer limits, away from all objectionable odors, where rooms can be ventilated and sunned in winter as well as in summer. Every room in a dwelling should be swept and dusted once or twice a week, the beds aired, and bedding changed. The general custom of housekeepers in our large and crowded cities, of keeping their rooms dark, winter or summer, inoculates into the system the germs of more diseases than could be enumerated and prescribed for in a day. A cheerful home with a small tract of land in the country, with wholesome food and water, is worth more to preserve health and life, than a house in a crowded city with luxuries and twenty rooms to let. That bad air is not the sole cause of infantile cholera, I will mention an incident in proof. While travelling through some of the thinly-settled districts of the British Provinces during the prevalence of cholera in the autumn of 1865, I noticed that most of the children suffering from the disease were those of parents whose circumstances would not warrant the comforts of life. This was during the months of September and October, when fish, oysters, milk and eggs are indulged in to some extent. I thought the custom of advising the removal of such patients to some elevated point near the salt sea air could avail but little, since they were near the sea air and mostly in well-ventilated houses, judging from the style of architecture. Also I noticed the same uncertainty on the part of women as to the management of the complaint as in the States. Herb teas, no matter what their nature, “catnip tea, castor-oil and paregoric.” Every drink sweetened, as a rule. The visits of the doctor few and far between; “so many cases he can’t possibly get around to them all.” I had a little charge at the time whom I never left an hour from the time it was taken ill till its recovery, three weeks later. The family doctor called in occasionally, but the circumstances of the young parents were such as to warrant the necessary aids to a recovery which it was my good fortune to administer. This was in a thickly-settled locality in the city of St. John, N. B., while in many upland towns of Nova Scotia it generally proved fatal. May we not be too willing to agree in charging our Heavenly Father with poisoning the air, so that it destroys infants by the tens of thousands in less than a quarter of a century?
Let the interested humanitarian visit those families where necessity demands the absence of the parent a part or all of each day, to seek a daily subsistence, leaving the youngest to the care of the eldest, winter or summer, before deciding whether it is a want of stamina, the depressions of the atmosphere, or indirect starvation which causes so great infantile mortality at certain seasons of the year. It is a mistake to suppose that cold milk given to a babe in excessive hot weather will answer as well as if warmed. The human stomach is supplied with heat from the blood and natural fluids, and when a quantity of anything colder than the contents of the organ is poured into it, the process needful to a healthy digestion cannot go on properly.