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Preventable Diseases of Children: Vomiting

Vomiting may indicate of the serious diseases of childhood or, more commonly in hot weather, "summer complaint" or simple diarrhea. Diarrhœa does not come from teething but from too much food, too frequent feeding, too little water, too little sleep and too much handling.

The most frequent cause is overfeeding. prolonged sickness and finally death.

Vomiting due to this cause may be This often causes the first sign of trouble. The bowels may not become loose until several days later. A certain symptom of danger is loose, green passages from the bowels, or passages containing mucus or curds. A healthy bottlefed infant should have at least one and not more than two or three movements of the bowels each day.

These should be yellow or "gingerbread color" and not too hard to be passed easily. If they become greenish, frothy, or otherwise unnatural, and more frequent than two or three a day, consult your doctor. In summer it is dangerous to wait. Any diarrhea or simple looseness of the bowels indicates the presence of some irritation in the intestinal tract.

These diseases are often mild at the beginning. There may be no fever and the child may show no signs of illness other than diarrhea or vomiting. Such a baby-often in a few hours-may become dangerously, if not fatally, ill. The simplest cases of diarrhea and vomiting during the summer must not be ignored. Neglect of the first symptoms of indigestion may lead to infection and inflammation and be followed by the death of the child. If taken in hand promptly, this condition will almost always yield to simple remedies and serious trouble may be averted. If the movements remain green in color and increase in number to five or six or more in twentyfour hours, the baby is beginning to have bowel trouble or summer diarrhœa.

Causes and Remedies. - When the baby vomits or has diarrhœa the first thing to do is to find and remove the cause. The trouble is probably due to improper feeding or over-feeding.

The child may be given too much food, the milk may be too strong for its age, or it may be dirty and unsanitary. sanitary. A child gets diarrhoea more often in summer than in winter because the heat makes him weak and spoils his food, and because you fail to realize that he needs less food in hot weather. Stop all food at once. Every drop of milk that goes into the baby's mouth after this warning simply adds to the poison that is already there. You will cause serious or fatal illness by feeding your baby after the bowels become loose and the movements green in color. Give nothing but pure boiled water or barley water. Send for the doctor and do not begin feeding the baby again without the doctor's orders. Meantime stop the milk at once. Give only cool boiled water or barley water until the child can be seen by a physician.

Do not give any medicine, except perhaps a teaspoonful of lime water every hour, to modify the acidity of the stomach. If the baby should have a convulsion before the doctor comes, put it in a warm bath and pour cool water on its head. But this must not be done if the convulsion occurs immediately after a meal. Do not give any "cordials" or "teas" or diarrhea mixtures to stop vomiting or check the bowels. Nothing but harm can be done by such means.

If you cannot get a doctor promptly, give the baby two teaspoonfuls of castor oil to remove the irritating matter from the bowels. Also wash out the bowels with an enema of tepid water containing two level teaspoonfuls of salt to the quart. This should be given from a fountain syringe. Do not hold the bag more than eighteen inches or two feet above the baby, so that the water will run slowly. Babies under fifteen months almost invariably pass part of the water back by the side of the tube while it is flowing in.

When vomiting occurs give the baby as much water as it will take.

This will help to wash the remaining undigested food out of the stomach.