CHOLERA INFAN'TUNI (Lat., the cholera of children). A term used to designate choleri form diar•Inea in children. The disease is com paratively rare and of infectious origin. Strik ingly similar to Asiatic cholera, it is caused mostly by feeding impure milk. Generally the disease follows an ordinary mild diarrhoea of a few clays' or weeks' duration, but in some cases death ensues within a few hours of the beginning of the illness. The symptoms are due to the specific poison of the disease acting upon the heart. the ne•ve-centres, and the intestinal vaso motor nerves. The following are the most im portant symptoms: Prostration, steady rise of temperature to 103° P., or even to 108° F., almost constant vomiting of food. serum. mu cus, and bilious material: twelve to fifteen passages from the bowels each day, first of green, yellow, or brownish color, later of col orless serum, in most cases odorless, in some lew instances overpoweringly offensive; rapid emaciation and loss of weight; depressed an terior fontanel. sunken eyes, sharp features, a peculiar pallor and an 8/1X10115 expression; nervous irritation and moaning or erring; dull ness, stupor, relaxation, and coma or convul sions; rarely delirium. The disease is fatal in two-thirds of the cases, and almost all cases occur in bottle-fed children of the poor. during the first or second summer of their lives. Unless the disease is attacked in its earliest stages, the ticatment is very unsatisfactory. It may consist
in stomach-•ashing and intestinal irrigation, in early hypodermic injection of morphine, injec tion of saline solution into the cellular tissues to the amount of a half-pint in twelve hours, giv ing graduated baths and iee-•ater enemata to reduce the temperature, and administering stimu lants. If the treatment is successful and the vomiting ceases, the patient may take cold whey. barley water, and albumin water, fol lowed after twenty-four hours' rest by the breast for from two minutes to five minutes. The term cholera infantunt is also sometimes used, inaptly, as a synonym for gastro-enteritis (q.v.).
In 1902 C. W. Duval and V. H. Bassett dis covered and isolated the bacillus which causes the summer diarrhceas of infants. Their inves tigations have been verified by Drs. W. H. Welch and .James Knox. of Baltimore. Md., where the discovery was made. They find this bacillus to he identical with Bacillus dysenteriw (Shiga). which has been isolated in acute dysentery in adults by Shiga of Japan. Flexner and Strong in the Philippines, Kruse in Germany, and Vedder and Duval in the 'United States. Tt was not found in the stools of healthy children, nor of those suffering with simple diarrhoea. Consult Holt, Diseases of Infants and Children (New York, ]879).