OUR BABIES.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2523, 31 July 1915, Page 13

OUR BABIES.

fBT'-HTGIU.I WATER. Without air wo live three minutes. Without water wo may livo three days. Without food we may livo three weeks —or, indeed, we may survive for a month or more. Ono of the most important tilings for tile mother to grasp is the supreme importance of water for the health and life of the baby. The general ignorance on this point is extraordinary. There is no matter in which the Plunkct Nurses find more difficulty .than, in getting the mother to grasp the ?act that, so long as a- child can take and absorb water; its life is usually in no danger, provided the absence of food is not unduly prolonged. A healthy child will livo for some weeks if kept supplied with a sufficiency of puro . water, and for the first few days it would lose very little indeed in weight and condition, though kept without a particle of food—fluid or solid. The value of this knowledge can scarcoly be over-estimated, especially when dealing with sick children.

What Takes Place in Diarrhoea. A baby suffering from diarrhoea, for instance, losses weight and strength with extreme rapidity. Not only is the food it takes hurried too quickly through the intestines to sllow of any appreciable quantity being absorbed into the blood,_ but there is poured out into the intestine from the blood vessels a steady drain of the very substance of the baby. This cannot go on for long without producing exhaustion; but the rapid collapse liable to be induced by, acute diarrhoea is due more to the draining away of water from the blood than to the loss of the nutrient substance of the baby.

The explanation of this is very simple. The heart and hlobd vessels need to be kept properly filled in order to sustain the circulation; and if there is a marked deficiency of fluid for the heart to pump, the circulation in the brain comes more or less to a standstill, and the result is fainting and collapse.. That this is not due to lack of food in the blood is clearly shown by the fact that if we inject a sufficiency of water, with a trace of salt in it, into one of the veins, the circulation goes oh again ail right, and animation is quickly restored. Water an Essential Requirement of all Living Matter. Not only- is wata,* a necessity; for tho mechanical processes of pumping and ,circulation and for tho proper distribution of the blood to all parts of the body, but water is an essential requirement of every living cell in the universe.

This can be brought liomo to out minds, by. reflecting on what takes place when we put the cut stalk of a plant, the leaves oi which are flagging from evaporation of moisture, into water. Each of the millions of tiny cells quickly takes up its quota of fluid if wilting has not been allowed to go too far. Tho leaves and flowers soon put on tho appearance of health and litness, though not a particle of building matter in the; form of food has been given, -but only pure water. v Every living particle of our body must have water, just as every plant cell must have it. Water is their 'first requirement,. and without water they rapidly wilt and die: /i'l;e first need of anyone suffering from diarrhoea is to keep up the supply of fluid, and to desist from giving any food whatever for a, shorter or longer timo, according to the severity of the case. While tho alimontary canal is infested by millions of microbes,,which flourish and multiply so long as fresh supplies of food are given to.them, it is worse than useless to allow any food ,to be taken. Fermentation and jxrisoning will tend to be" kept up as long as wo continue to. pour'in food materials, all of which are fermentable, and form poisons under the action of microbes.

ILLUSTRATIVE CASE. • Over 10 years ago I was very much improssed with tho following ease, and tho memory of it remains quite clear, though in the moantime the matter has been ono .of almost daily consideration in tho oases of other .children Baby Extremely Wasted by Diarrhoea.. A baby about two months old was brought by a nurse to see the hospital doctors. The child had been suffering from diarrhoea and vomiting for about a fortnight, and wm reduced beyond the stage at which one would have supposed that life could continue. It was emaciated even more that the child shown in the picture on Pago 41 of the society's book. Tho -.kin hung plated in folds, and felt like . soft glovo kid. No food was beiug retained or absorbed. Practically everything given was boing vomited or rapidly carried off by the bowel, and in addition, of course, there was a steady drain from the blood. The doctors said frankly that, they did not think anything could be done to save the child's life at this stagermatters had gone too far; the child was apparently moribund. However, the nurse offered to sit up night and day and devote herself entirely to the case. ,

Starving a Starved Baby. The question which the doctors deliberated, was this:' Seeing that the nutrient supplies of the body had become so extromely depleted, wis it reasonable in such a case to withhold food even for a few hours? On the other hand, was there any use giving food, seeing -that it Avas not onfy rejected at once or [drained away, but that some of the body substance was carried away along witli it? The nurse was told to wash, out the bowel aud then to give only boiled water'for the night (12 hours). The next morning she reported with great delight that the child liad had eight hours of steady, contented sleep—the first sound, restful sleep for a fortnight. rrn. This was the start of recovery, lhe Jbaby was out of all danger in _a few | 'days, and within a few weeks it was quite well. The child grew up a strong, healthy girl. The Basis of Treatment of Diarrhoea, Indigestion, oto. If mothers could only grasp the full significance of a case of this kind, half tho dangers of infantile diarrhoea would be removed. The basis of all treatment in these cases is to give no food whatever- for at least 12. hours, and generally for longer. The difficulty is to induce the average mother to keep her child without , food long enough. She can scarcely be made to understand that any foodwhatever at this stage feeds tho microbes, not tho baby—that even a trace of food feeds tho germs, and will cause further poisoning .of .the baby, and tho draining away of its body substanco along with the fluid : needed for tho circulation of the blood. Generally a baby suffering from diarrhoea can bo induced to swallow enough water, as there tends to bo marked thirst; but if necessary additional fluid ought to be) given by the bowel in the .form of salino injections. . In more urgent cases tho doctor may make up the fluid in. the system rapidly by injecting water direct into tho body through tlio skill. This last is ail ext.remoly valuable safeguard where the drain lias 'been excessive and imminent collapso is threatened. I need scarcely say that those latter questions aro matters for tho doctor to dccido and deal with. 1 mention them merely in order to impress further on mothers tho paramount importance of water for-the child, and the _ useless-1 nosa Mvl actual danger of pivujpc food, wlwiii lb oanuoti tm • jjropeMy (llgoaua