A Book of Medical Discourses, in Two Parts

by Rebecca Lee Crumpler

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.