Infantile temperatures in health and disease / by William Squire.

  • William Stevens Squire
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Infantile temperatures in health and disease / by William Squire. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    close to the mother’s side in a greater heat than seemed wholesome, or exposed in washing and dressing to a lower temperature, and for a much longer time than seemed prudent. The diurnal variation of temperature, which becomes the rule of later life, is hardly to be observed in young infants; their sleep comes as readily in the day as in the night, and their food is often as easily within reach in the night as in the day. A somewhat higher temperature is found in the latter part of the day by the fourth or fifth month, but even then a great difference between the morning and evening temperature would indicate want of attention on the part of the nurse, or delicacy of constitution in the child, or both. A marked increase of temperature towards night has been established by Dr. Sidney Ringer as a sign of tuberculosis. Food is the source of heat, and the equality of temperature in early infancy is mainly dependant upon fitness of food and frequency of feeding. Two hours, or if the infant has been sleeping, three hours may be requisite for a full meal to influence the temperature of a healthy child: thus of three observations taken in the second month, in Case 1, two were taken within an hour of the mid-day meal, giving 98° and 98°*2 in the neck, 98°'6 in the rectum; the third taken at 3 o’clock was 99°T in the neck, the child had been sleeping since its meal, which was a full one. The immediate effect of a meal, or of warm liquid merely, in raising the temperature of the body, as pointed out by the late Mr. Stuart, has been too generally stated; it has rarely been noticeable here, probably because of the care taken to avoid giving infants their food too hot: once this was allowed with the following result. In the case just given (Case 1) the infant when three months old was restless and in some pain; the diet being equal parts of milk and water, some curd passed undi¬ gested ; the child had been recently crying much, the tempera¬ ture was 98°’2 in the rectum, and until the descent of some fgecal matter was only 98°. Four ounces of thin, sweet liquid at a temperature of 101° was given in a tube bottle, the half of this was taken while the temperature was near 100°, and most of it while above 99°. In a quarter of an hour the
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