If the attack is not severe, with perhaps three loose passages a day, it may be corrected through the diet of the mother, or, in a bottle-fed baby, by changing the modification of the milk. The malt-sugar should be omitted; skimmed milk instead of whole or plain milk should be used, and the milk may be boiled for four or five minutes.
If the diarrhea persists in spite of this change in the food, and there is fever or evidence of pain, the food should be stopped, either breast milk or bottle milk, and boiled water, in small quantities, should be given for ten or twelve hours; then barley water for ten hours more. The child will not suffer from hunger, because it cannot retain food of any sort.
Give castor-oil in the following doses:
Up to three months, one-half teaspoonful.
From three to six months, one teaspoonful.
From six to nine months, one and one-half teaspoonfuls.
From nine to twelve months, two teaspoonfuls.
From twelve months on, one to two tablespoonfuls.
If the child cannot retain castor-oil, then try calomel:
For the child between one and three months, one-half grain, taken at the rate of one-eighth grain in each dose, ten to fifteen minutes apart; this means four one-eighth grain tablets. The tablets should be dissolved in water.
From three to six months, three-fourths of a grain may be given.
At one year, one grain, in doses of one-tenth grain each, fifteen minutes apart.
For the infant, calomel followed by a warm enema will carry off the poison in the intestines. For an older child the calomel must be followed by half a glass of citrate of magnesia, given early in the morning, to thoroughly cleanse the intestines.
Severe vomiting is treated exactly like intestinal indigestion, by the use of cathartics. If either diarrhea or vomiting does not yield to this treatment within twenty-four hours a physician should be summoned. Severe vomiting may be a symptom of an acute and serious attack of illness.