THE FEEDING OF SICK CHILDREN.
After having given in the foregoing the principal rules for the feeding of well children it now behooves us to take up the question of how to feed sick children, and we must state that except in special cases every thing we have said about the quantity and quality of food for the healthy should be observed still more closely in the sick and convalescent, whose power of compensation is usually lowered. What the former may easily be able to manage may endanger the life of the latter. In this work we give the diet with each disease, here we will only give a general survey of the action of diet as a therapeutic agent.
1. The (so-called) Fever Diet.—In years gone by this used to be considered of the greatest importance owing to the view which was then held by all that fever per se formed a contraindication for giving anything like the normal amount of food. The argument was this: food creates heat, in fever the temperature of the body is increased, ergo: the inges tion of fuel has to stop. Now we know better and no longer consider fever, as such, a contraindication to food, but of the pathological processes which either cause the fever or accompany it; otherwise we will no longer give the bland and weak diet formerly called fever diet, which consisted of thin watery infusions and decoctions of carbohydrates of weak tea and at most a little piece of stale wheat bread. To-day we do not believe that fever as such demands a total exclusion of all food, and we even give in some forms of long continued fever the best possible food, as for instance in tuberculosis, suppurative affections of bones and joints, sonic septic troubles, typhoid fever, malaria, croupous pneumonia, etc. In our desire to give a child with fever sufficient, or at least nearly suffi cient, food, we are aided in that the child's appetite is not as much affected as that of the adult, at times even not at all, but if the child should refuse food then we must he very careful. Frequently we observe an aversion to meat and broths. We must be guided entirely by the appe
tite and when this is good we may safely feed in many diseases, but never when the fever is of unknown origin and before we have been able to make a diagnosis. In such cases we adhere to the old-fashioned fever diet in order to avoid doing the patient harm and we will many a tune have the pleasant surprise of seeing the fever vanish (luring this starva tion, because frequently fever in children is nothing but the outcome of intestinal irritation.
One food we must always give in sufficient quantities to our fever patients, namely water, because the fever itself increases the demand for water, therefore the food should much water or should be liquid. To quench the thirst we may give very light black tea, grape juice, lemonade. very light and not very sweet (one lemon and four heaping teaspoonfuls of sugar to the quart), barley water (recipe, p. 17-I, No. 5:3); all these drinks are given cool, because they thus act quicker and stop the feeling of dryness in the mouth.
2. The Diet of of the entire gastrointestinal tract as well as disturbances of its glandular apparatus and the kidneys, which latter take care of the elimination, demand rest ; by this we mean that we have to prevent as 11111(.11 as possible all irritation and have to provide the greatest possible inactivity. and we must vary our dietetic prescriptions according to the location and the nature of the pathological changes.
a. In inflammations in the oral cavity, in the pharynx, the retro pharynx, in wounds of these and after operations ttonsillotomy, adenot omy) and in inflammations around the throat, etc., all solid food should be avoided and the necessary nourishment is therefore given in liquid form: milk, cream, strained chicken soup, egg, etc. In many of these cases nourishment is better taken cool, or even cold or iced, ice cream is very pleasant (recipe No. 50, p. 17:3) or fruit ice. especially lemon ice, is cooling and at the same time quenches the thirst.