Although we can scarcely call constipation a disease, yet it sometimes leads to disease. The frequent giving of aperients only adds to the stubbornness of the bowels.
I have generally found a draught, early every morning, of cold pump water, the eating either of Huntley and Palmer's loaf ginger-bread, or of oatmeal gingerbread, a variety of animal and vegetable food, ripe sound fruit, Muscatel raisins, a fig, or an orange after dinner, and, when he be old enough, coffee and milk instead of tea and milk, to have the desired effect, more especially if, for a time, aperients be studiously avoided.
276. Have you any remarks to make on Rickets?
Rickets is owing to a want of a sufficient quantity of earthy matter in the bones; hence the bones bend and twist, and lose their shape, causing deformity. Rickets generally begins to show itself between the first and second years of a child's life. Such children are generally late in cutting their teeth, and when the teeth do come they are bad, deficient of enamel, discoloured, and readily decay. A rickety child is generally stunted in stature; he has a large head, with overhanging forehead, or what nurses call a watery-head-shaped forehead. The fontanelles, or openings of the head, as they are called, are a long time in closing. A rickety child is usually talented; his brain seems to thrive at the expense of his general health. His breast-bone projects out, and the sides of his chest are flattened; hence he becomes what is called chicken-breasted or pigeon-breasted; his spine is usually twisted, so that he is quite awry, and, in a bad case, he is hump-backed; the ribs, from the twisted spine, on one side bulge out; he is round-shouldered; the long bones of his body, being soft, bend; he is bow-legged, knock-kneed, and weak-ankled.
Rickets are of various degrees of intensity, the humpbacked being among the worst There are many mild forms of rickets; weak ankles, knocked-knees, bowed-legs, chicken-breasts, being among the latter number. Many a child, who is not exactly hump-backed, is very round-shouldered, which latter is also a mild species of rickets.
Show me a child that is rickety, and I can generally prove that it is owing to poor living, more especially to poor milk. If milk were always genuine, and if a child had an abundance of it, my belief is that rickets would be a very rare disease. The importance of genuine milk is of national importance. We cannot have a race of strong men and women unless, as children, they have had a good and plentiful supply of milk. It is utterly impossible. Milk might well be considered one of the necessaries of a child's existence. Genuine, fresh milk, then, is one of the grand preventatives, as well as one of the best remedies, for rickets. Many a child would not now have to swallow quantities Of cod-liver oil if previously he had imbibed quantities of good genuine milk. An insufficient and a poor supply of milk in childhood sows the seeds of many diseases, and death often gathers the fruit. Can it be wondered at, when there is so much poor and nasty milk in England, that rickets in one shape or another is so prevalent?
When will mothers arouse from their slumbers, rub their eyes, and see clearly the importance of the subject? When will they know that all the symptoms of rickets I have just enumerated usually proceed from the want of nourishment, more especially from the want of genuine, and of an abundance of, milk? There are, of, course, other means of warding off rickets besides an abundance of nourishing food, such as thorough ablution, plenty of air, exercise, play, and sunshine; but of all these splendid remedies, nourishment stands at the top of the list.
I do not mean to say that rickets always proceeds from poorness of living—from poor milk. It sometimes arises from scrofula, and is an inheritance of one or of both the parents.
Rickety children, if not both carefully watched and managed, frequently, when they become youths, die of consumption.
A mother, who has for some time neglected the advice I have just given, will often find, to her grievous cost, that the mischief has, past remedy, been done, and that it is now "too late!—too late!"