OUR BABIES.

Clutha Leader, Volume XLII, Issue 87, 9 May 1916, Page 7

OUR BABIES.

[By Hygeia.]

Published under the auspices of the Society for the Health of Women and Children. " It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom..

THE USE AND ABUSE OF CASTOR OIL. A bottle of castor oil is to be found iu almost every home, and there is probably no better household aperient tor use where a baby is suffering from an ordinary sudden attack of infantile diarrhoea'. The advantages of castor oil for clearing out, the bowels at the start of diarrhoea i«s that, by a secondaction, it tends to be constipating. Now this secondary, astringent, binding. or constipating tendency of castor oil is the very reason why it should not be used when a baby is suffering from constipation, because with each successive dose the baby is left more and more bound. Another common abuse of castor oil is the giving of a small dose to the new_ lwrn baby. This meddlesome notion of artificially cleansing the system of the natural blackish-green contents of the bowel in the first few days of life is wrong and harmful—no purgative of any kind should be needed, and the routine use of castor oil is quite unjustifiable. A third mistake which mothers are liable to mako* in regard to castor oil is the iuse of the medicine when a child is seized w'th sudden acute abdominal pain. In this connection I cannot do better than quote a warning which appeared some time ago in the 'British Medical Journal.' The author was l)r Moynihan, the leading English authority of the day on the surgical aspects of intestinal disorders. He wrote as follows: AVOID APERIENTS.

"By some means or other parents should be made to know that the dosing of children with aperients is ;m evil, and tliafc they must put a cheek upon those 'purgative-loving propensities,' which, wem inseparable froui motherhood. I would like to have the iyower to write in every nursery in the Kingdom in large letters in the most, prominent place the two words —AVOID APERIENTS.

"To give aperients to children suddenly seized with acute abdominal pain i.s homicidal, yet it hardly occurs to any mother or nurse to do anything but this, the most disastrous thing of all. "The onset of sudden intense pain in the belly is Nature's special danger signal Pointing to obstruction of the bowels by kinking or tucking-in, .and is also her way of proclaiming tin? onset of appendicitis. Nurses ought to know that the pain may not be in the lower part of the belly, where the appendix is situated, but at the ton of the belly, in the region of the 'pit of the stomach.' This fact is nnost misleading, l>oth to jwrents and nurses, because they are «'i'Pt- to conclude that the child has 'swallowed something.' "The first hvmptoms of an attack of acute appendicitis is pain. It is always pain, and never sickness or vomiting, nor inal-aise, nor any other symptom whatever. ... It may be ram'dly followed by shivering, sharp rise of temperature, vomiting, diarrhoea, etc." What does the mother do in such a case? H: ivsng jumped to the conclusion that the child has been eating green fruit, or other indigestible food, she flies to the castor oil bottle. The proper treatment is alx-olute starvation, even water lie'iig given- .spnringlv, if at all. until the doctor airives. The child •should be put to bed and hot fomentations should be applied to the abdomen. Such measures can do no harm, always afford some rebel", and are equally applicable to sudden obstruction of the liowel. In either case the use of purgatives, and delay in calling in medical aid, often puts the child beyond the hope of recovery before the doctor arrives on the scene.

Castor oil does not cure constipation, but makes it worse. GLAXO HI'ILDS BOW IK BABIKS. Glaxo is used the world over in the principal hospitals for children, and is recommended hv leading doctors. Write to "Glaxo" Dept. !20, Palmerston North, for a free copy of the 'Glaxo Babv Book containing 12 pages of advice 011 infant feeding and on the care and training of the child.