The science and art of nursing the sick / by Aeneas Munro.

  • Munro, Aeneas.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The science and art of nursing the sick / by Aeneas Munro. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    291/350 (page 281)
    of nature, yet there are certain other occasions when circumstances demand that, in order to save the the same number living in the latter (Op. Cit, p. 53). In the northern counties, including Durham, Northumberland, Cum- berland, and Westmoreland, the death-rate from this disease among children under two years of age is reduced to nearly half of what it is in many of the English counties (Supplement to the T'we7ity-fifih Annual Report, p^. 12, 13^; so it may be supposed that the inhabitants of the northern counties have learnt some- thing of the good customs of their neighbours the Scotch. There can be no doubt that one reason why spoon-diet Want of causes disease in children, previous to dentition, is, that the food supposed given is at once swallowed by the toothless infant, so that it is disease^n very imperfectly mixed with the saliva ; on the other hand, the ^p°°°'^= act of sucking causes the saliva to flow, and, at the same time, to mix with the milk ; and the more slowly the milk flows, the more perfectly the mixing is effected. Toothless persons often become affected with indigestion from this cause, notwith- standing that they chew their food as well as they can, and much better than a toothless infant does ; and Mr. Mellin states, in Vol. II., p. 571, of this journal, that 'fast-eating people invariably suffer from indigestion' from this cause, and that 'infants, before they have teeth, cannot digest, because they cannot insalivate, farinaceous matter,' the especial reasons for which he clearly explained. Might not all spoon-diet be made sufficiently liquid to be sucked through a tube out of a bottle ? The more difficult and slow the operation is to the infant, the more perfectly the food would be mixed with the saliva [?] But it should not for a moment be supposed that this difference in the mode of giving spoon-victuals will make up for the difference between it and the mother's milk. The old maxim, that ' Children, like chickens,