Entero-colitis in infants : with special reference to its management / by George Dow Scott.

  • Scott, George Dow, 1871-
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Entero-colitis in infants : with special reference to its management / by George Dow Scott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    these conditions influence our treatment. The gross lesions of the gut may range from a simple catarrhal inflammation to a deeper lesion of the mucosa or the sub- mucosa, and muscularis. Undoubtedly no one micro-organism causes these severe lesions, but rather a combination of two or more, as Shiga bacilli with streptococci, and the toxic products of others. We find these cases almost always fatal. Treatment.—In the treatment of infants we must be guided by many things, as the vomiting, number and condition of the stools, pre-existing diseases of the infant, particularly those of the digestive tract, length of time of faulty and irregular feed- ing, condition of the intestinal tract, tym- panites, tenesmus, prostration, dentition, and of the amount of intestinal intoxication. With the fever, which may range from ioo to io6° F., depending upon the amount of intoxication, we have little to do. In the unstable nervous system of the infant, vomiting is often not only from gastric- fermentation-irritability, but from an irri- tability of the vomiting center from the toxins absorbed. The heat center is like- wise strongly affected. Rarely can we judge from the symptoms, if the cause is due to a carbohydrate or proteid decompo- sition. Besides grocers’ milk, condensed milk, and at times excellent milk, which has been allowed to stand in the sun or heat, we find in infants that raw apples, coarse vegetables, oatmeal uncooked, too many eggs, and often canned vegetables bring about the condition of excessive vomiting; high fever, with stools ranging from yellow green to all shades of green or brown, of foul odor, and perhaps containing a small or large amount of large or small hard curds or undigested food, with usually quite a bit of mucus of dull appearance, from the upper tract, or glistening and glary from the lower gut. The infants which are stricken suddenly, without pre- vious existing indigestion, get well soon. Unfortunately, in the treatment of dys- entery we cannot as yet rely upon the serums; we may in the future, however. As to the classes of infants to be treated, we may denote them under three headings: (O' Those mildly ill; (2) those cases be- tween mild and severe; (3) severe, cases. In the mild types is found a slight hyper-