Antimonium c. White coating on the tongue; nausea, retching, coughing, sometimes vomiting and watery diarrhoea.
Arsenicum. The child is very weak; the slightest effort seems to exhaust, it, such as vomiting, &c. Intense thirst, with vomiting immediately after drinking. Vomiting and purging at the same time. Coldness of the extremities; worse after midnight.
Bryonia. When hot weather, seems to develop the attack. The child vomits its ingesta immediately. Lumpy diarrhoea; colic, with much thirst; lips dry and parched.
Calcarea c. In leucophlegmatic children during teething. Swelling and hardness of the abdomen; flabby muscles; skin dry and shriveled; hair dry; with the hair looking like tow.
Camphor. The skin is cold as marble, yet the child will not remain covered; much prostration and diarrhoea. Sometimes these cold spells only come on at night and pass off in the morning.
Carbo veget. Similar to Bryonia, may be used when that remedy appears to be indicated, but fails to cure.
China. Very flatulent diarrhoea, containing portions of the ingesta, stools fetid, and occurring immediately after eating. Partaking of fruit may have been the cause of the attack.
Croton t. The stool occurs suddenly, one gush and it is finished.
Dulcamara. Every cool change in the weather, or an unusually cool night, causes a relapses; or such condition of the weather appears to cause the attack at its first onset.
Gratiola. Violent vomiting and purging of yellow substances, and much flatulency.
Ipecacuanha. Much nausea and vomiting, or almost constant nausea, these symptoms predominate. Watery diarrhoea, or green, or still more particularly, fermented stools.
Mercurius sol. The child has colic, slimy, and sometimes bloody stools, with tenesmus, the colic being relieved immediately after the stool. There is often much perspiration, particularly upon the thighs, where it is cold and clammy. The child is worse in the early part of the night, and is very weak.
Nux v. In cases where some marked error in diet has caused indigestion; or we may think of Nux after Ipecac. had failed.
Podophyllum p. Exceedingly offensive stools, which are most frequent in the morning. Moaning during sleep, with half-closed eyes, and rolling the head from side to side.
Secale c. Great debility, vomiting and diarrhoea; much thirst; pale face, sunken eyes, dry heat, quick pulse, restlessness, and sleeplessness.
Sulphur. When there are repeated relapses; or when the case seems to linger; with excoriations, redness about the anus; eruptions; weak spells; sleeps with frequent waking.
Veratrum. The least motion increases the nausea. Cold sweat on the forehead, from vomiting, with great prostration. Pulse almost imperceptible. The least quantity of liquid excites vomiting, which is followed by cold sweat on the forehead. Prostration, with cold sweat and breath.
VOMITING.
Vomiting in infants and little children constitutes one of the most obvious symptoms of indigestion. This, as already stated, may be merely an effort of nature to relieve the overloaded stomach. But, in a large number of cases, the vomiting, while it forms but a single one with other symptoms, indicate a still more serious disorder of the stomach. And from the explanation, above given, of the nature and progress of indigestion, it will be seen why vomiting should often be accompanied with diarrhoea. In the more severe found of gastro-intestinal disease this is always the case; and this connection was especially shown in the consideration of cholera infantum in the preceding section, where these two characteristic symptoms were discussed together.
Vomiting differs in different cases, in accordance with the nature and extent of the morbid influence upon which it depends. Thus, we may not several kinds of vomiting which may occur in infants:
First. That simple regurgitation of food taken in excess, already sufficiently described.
Second. Acid and sour-smelling vomiting; vomiting from indigestion; and such as appears to result from gastric or general fever.
Third. Bilious vomiting, of greenish or bitter fluids, either separately or mingled with food. This form may imply functional disturbance of the liver; or it may simply result from gastric irritation and straining to vomit, which causes an actual regurgitation of the bile.
Fourth. The vomiting which accompanies severe forms of diarrhoea, as in cholera infantum, inflammatory vomiting and diarrhoea; the discharges from the stomach may be watery.
Fifth. Vomiting of blood; a rare from of disease in very young infants; occurring within a few days, sometimes within a few hours after birth; and accompanied by purging of blood. This seems to result fro engorgement of the liver and abdominal veins, and may arise from interruption of the circulation by external compression in difficult labor. West.
Sixth. Fecal vomiting, indicative of obstruction of the bowels, as in cases of most obstinate constipation, of intussusception, and of strangulated hernia.
Seventh. Vomiting which occurs as symptomatic of other diseases. Of these we mention, that which appears as one of the most important symptoms of incipient cerebral disease: “Nausea and vomiting are seldom absent. I am not acquainted with any one symptom which should so immediately direct your attention of the brain, as the occurrence of causeless vomiting, and especially its continuance. At first, perhaps, the child vomits only when it has taken food; but before long the stomach will reject even the blandest fluid, and then the efforts of vomiting will come on when the stomach is empty, a little greenish mucus being rejected with no relief, the retching and vomiting soon returning. This may continue for several days before any other indication of cerebral disease is discovered; and, in this connection, the bowels are usually, although not invariably constipated. The persistence of intractable vomiting, in the absence of any other cause, either in the quality of the food, or in the state of the digestive apparatus, will occasion a very strong suspicion of deep-seated dyscrasia, powerfully affecting the organic nervous system, and threatening to develop itself in the form of hydrocephalus, either acute or chronic. The vomiting which so constantly which so constantly precedes the attack of scarlatina is well known; and in this case, as in that first mentioned of incipient cerebral disease, the severity and persistence of the symptomatic vomiting bear some proportion to the gravity of the subsequent disorder. For further consideration of this subject, see succeeding section on Hydrocephalus.
In the treatment of vomiting careful attention must be given to all the accompanying symptoms and conditions, even to the observation of the state of the pupil of the eye; to the scrutiny of the discharges themselves; and to the absence or presence of known causes and attendant circumstances.
When there is vomiting of blood, first be sure that the blood does not come from the nipple; if it does, a little pressure upon the neck of this organ will cause it to appear.
For the several kinds of vomiting, study the following remedies:
Vomiting of blood:
Arnica. May be needed if the blood has been injured.
Arsenicum. The child seems weak and much exhausted.
Ipecacuanha. Much nausea and vomiting of blood.
Nux v. Constipation; violent of arterial blood.
Regurgitation, or vomiting of milk:
Bryonia, Calcarea c., Cina, Iodium, Ipecacuanha, Lycopodium, Nux vomica, Silicea, Sulphur.
Vomiting of ingesta:
Calcarea c., Chamomilla, Chin, Ipecacuanha, Lycopodium, Nux vomica, Phosphorus, Pulsatilla, Sulphur.
Bilious vomiting:
Arsenicum, Bryonia, Chamomilla, China, Ipecacuanha, Mercurius, Nux vomica, Pulsatilla, Sepia, Veratrum.
Fecal vomiting:
Belladonna, Nux vomica, Opium, Plumbum.
DISEASES OF CHILDREN continued
LESIONS OF THE RESPIRATORY MUCOUS MEMBRANE.
THE great majority of the disorders incident to infants and young children consists in affections of the gastro-intestinal and respiratory mucous membranes. The latter organs, especially, exceedingly delicate as to offer but inefficient resistance to the many noxious influences inseparable from atmospheric vicissitudes; and, at the same time, they from the seat of development for various constitutional dyscrasia, and actively sympathize with morbid processes in other organs. Although it is stated on the authority of Professor Jorg, of Leipsic, that the great sensibility of the lining membrane of the respiratory apparatus does not exist in the same degree in the first month or two of infantile life that it does afterwards. “The exposure of an infant two or three weeks old to a low temperature, or to a vitiated air, will be followed by disturbances of the functions of the liver and the occurrence of jaundice; or perhaps by such depression of the muscular power as to render the child incapable of taking a full inspiration, so that its lungs collapse, and it dies from disease of the respiratory organs, but without the cough or bronchitic symptoms, which would not fail, if it were a little older, to announce the irritation of the mucous membrane of the air-tubes. to this remark, however, coryza forms an exception; since this affection is often seen to prove very annoying at an early period of infantile life. Catarrh, Bronchitis, and Pneumonia, seem to follow in order, in unison with the development of the child’s physical system; and each disorder prepares the way for that which may follow, the last form seeming in some cases to but the extension and developing of the first.
