Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures on the theory and practice of physic (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![That I may not seem to be either extravagant or exclusive in the kind of diet which I habitually direct, and would therefore recom- mend for your approval, in diarrhoea, I cheerfully adopt the very lan- guage of two able writers on the subject— Mr. Crampton and Dr. Forbes (Art. Diarrhoea, in Cyclopaedia of Fract. Med.), in prescribing the kind which in their opinion is best adapted to the various disorders coming under this head: — The following may be stated as the order in which the articles of diet will be found more proper in such cases : barley water, arrow root made with water, sago, tapioca, rice gruel, oatmeal gruel care- fully strained, light broths with some of the preceding ingredients. In some cases, more especially of the chronic kind, a drier diet is found more suitable — the liquid food appearing to keep up the diar- rhoea ; hut in all cases the ingesta must be of the mildest quality. Rice is one of the most valuable articles of diet in such cases. It should be well boiled, and merely moistened with a little broth. While it is extremely mild and unirritaling, rice scarcely leaves any remains to be transmitted along the intestines; and this is the reason why it is generally regarded as astringent. As soon as it can be borne, a s?nall proportion of the lightest animal food may be taken with the rice. Tender chicken [eaten without the skin] is the best to begin with; then white game boiled; then sweet mutton. The meat of young animals, as lamb and veal, should be avoided. Beef is too stimulant, and fish is bad on account of the large quantity of excrementitious matter it leaves in the bowels. Animal jellies are generally allowable in the cases where meat is found to agree ; but they often are more irritating to the bowels than the muscular flesh of animals. I would modify this opinion respecting animal jellies by saying that they are oppressive rather than stimulating to the stomach, which digests them slowly and imperfectly when it is in a state of atony, or weakened by long disease. A somewhat more compound animal food is required, such as the addition of osmazome to jelly, as it is found in chicken. Beef, especially when imperfectly masticated, —as it is by half the people who eat it, is a bad article of diet, both for the dvspeptic as well as the invalid with weak bowels: but I find that, when boiled with rire into a thick broth, from which the fat is carefully skinned, it gives nutriment both palatable and congenial with the digestive canal throughout. Even to children in the advanced stage of diarrhoea, when animal food is required, it is particularly serviceable. Enterorrhosa. with Membranous Formations. — I prefer using this title for the disease of which I am about to speak, to adopting that of Pseudo-Membranous Enteritises given by M. Roche, or of Fibrinous Diarrhoea by Dr. Symouds. Dr. Good calls it diarrhoea Tubularis. My designation does not imply a positive cause, such as inflammation, which, in fact, is not a necessary or precursor of the morbid formations in question : it expresses, however, their origin, viz., from the intestine, and the most usual, if not universal pre- ceding j»id accompanying phenomenon, viz., enterorrhoea. In saying that membranous formations on the mucous surface of the intestinal canal are not necessarily, nor in a majority of cases, preceded by inflammation, I had better, at the same time, direct your](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21156955_0248.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
