The diseases of infancy and childhood : designed for the use of students and practitioners of medicine / by Henry Koplik.

  • Henry Koplik
Date:
[1910]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The diseases of infancy and childhood : designed for the use of students and practitioners of medicine / by Henry Koplik. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    substances, such as fat. added to the albuminous substances of the food may replace nitrogenous waste in the body; increase of weight or growth can be accomplished only by the proteid elements of the food. The bone tissue, cartilage, tendon, connective tissue, need pro- teids also, as has been stated above, to replace the waste and accom- ]3lish the growth of these tissues. The breast-fed infant obtains in its food a casein and also, in small quantities, lactalbumin. From these the body forms not only the nitrogenous cell elements, but mucin, chondrin, glutin, elastin, keratin, which are derivatives of albumin, and whose mode of formation is still obscure (Munk). Fats.—Animal fats are composed of varying proportions of olein, palmitin, and stearin. Their presence in the body varies, within certain limits, from 9 to 23 per cent, of the body-weight. Fat is found in the body in the form of fat-deposits. It is deposited under- neath the skin, in the muscle, in the nerve tissue, around the various organs of the body. It plays an important role in the maintenance of the warmth of the body and exerts a non-conducting role, pre- venting radiation. As a food it cannot replace the proteids. Fat combined with proteid substances in the food may, however, act as a nitrogenous-saving substance. Thus, in muscular work the body needs a great amount of fat. If combined with the proteidb, nitrog- enous waste is saved and fat is burnt up in doing the muscular work, and it may even, if taken in sufficient quantities, cause an accumu- lation of fat in the body. To cause gTowth in nitrogenous tissue, however, the presence of a sufficient amount of proteid in the food is absolutely necessary. Thus, while fat and albumin may replace waste caused by muscular action, both in the fatty and nitrogenous tissues of the body, fat cannot add to the nitrogenous gi'owth of cell tissue. The infant and child obtain the fatty elements of the food in the milk. Whereas 97.5 per cent, of the fat in mother's milk is assimi- lated, only 93.5 per cent, of the fat of the cows' milk is assimilated by the infant. The artificially fed infant, therefore, is deprived of an important food element to the extent indicated, and in many cases assimilation of fats in the artificially fed infant is even much more imperfect in practice than is indicated by the percentage named. For in some infants, if the fat in the cows' milk is increased beyond a certain percentage, symptoms of intestinal indigestion manifest themselves in a so-calk^d fat diarrhoea. In other infants the difficul- ties of fat assimilation are shown in inordinate constipation and anaemia, especially if the percentage of fat in the food is in excess of 4 per cent. Such infants must be fed on a limited amount of fat because of the difficulty of assimilation of fat of cows' milk.
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