The student's guide to diseases of children.
- Sir James Goodhart, 1st Baronet
- Date:
- 1886
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The student's guide to diseases of children. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
69/732 page 49
![while the diarrha'a wliich comes on suddenly, is associated witli vomiting, and prevails to sucli an ex- tent in the hot season of the year that it has received the name of summei' diarrhcoa, though by no means wanting in its more special dangers, need give rise to no such anxieties, being usually readily curalde by simple means. Acute Diarrhoea.—-Of late years summer diarrho-a has been thought to be an index of the sanitary con- dition of large towns, and to be due in larger measure to tilth and j^utrefactive processes than, as had been previously held, to .simple atmospheric distui-bances, the nervous activities of dentition, and so on ; and this view is probably correct. The very existence of large towns implies the pre.sence of more or less material which possesses the power of originating putrefaction of all sorts. Aggregation is necessarily more favour- able to the transmi.ssion of septic material than isolation can he. The subjects of this complaint are all under live and mo.st of them under two years of age— that is to say, they are in great measure milk-feeders, and milk is a Ihtid which is very .sensitive to contamina- tion.* It may therefore be very readily supposed that whatever tends to lessen the ri.sk of this putrefaction —and what more so than paying attention to the sanitary condition of a town ?—will by lessening the * I may rL'iiiind the reader that all organic liquids, though under ordinary circuinstanccs liable to dei.'oinpo.sition, remain absolutely unchanged as long as they are protected from particulate contagion, and there is good evidence that the various kinds of fermentation and putrefaction are due to the introduction and growth of various kinds of bacteria. Of milk in particular J m.-iy <piute from Sir Joseph I,ist(‘r, whose re.searche.s in this domain are well k'liown (“On L.actic b'ermentation,’' Trains. I’al.h. Soc. of Land., vul. x.\ix. P- 43.S) •—“ 1 once met with a bacterium, but only once, tliat would not live in milk ; for extremely numerous as tin? varieties of bac- teria appear to lie, .almost all of tliem seem to tlirive in that Ihpiid.” The outbreaks of sucli diseases as tyiihoid fever, scarlatina, diph- theria, and even of ei>idcmie di.arrlima, whiidi have of late years been traced to a milk sonroe, must, according to ])rcsent knowledge, be explained in tliis way, although tlie actual bacterium or germ has not as yet in any case been demonstrated. E](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24990462_0069.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
