Infantile Diarrhea.

MILLARD DECKER, M. D.

It is always an open question as to the best means of treating infantile diarrheas that prevail during the summer months of the year, from which the mortality is usually large despite the numerous remedies we have heralded to us as universal panaceas for the summer complaints of children and adults.

As to my views of treatment I shall have to beg to differ with some of the authors, as I believe that pain if persistent should be relieved by some form of opiate such as paregoric or Dover powder, for pain of itself will quickly exhaust and contribute to fatal termination. As regards other drugs my list has been cut short by the introduction of glyco-thymoline, from which I have obtained the greatest success both as to promptness in effect and in forestalling the serious complications that sometimes arise-

Case 1. Nellie C., aged nine months, functional diarrhea. Artificially fed; temperature 100; pulse fairly good; tongue whitish fur; stools very frequent, smelling sour, principally mucus. The treatment consisted in changing the diet from condensed milk to sterilized milk and ordering fifteen-drop doses of glyco-thymoline every three hours in water. I called next day and found the child much better, passages fewer in number and with more consistency to each movement. On the following day the child was up and around, having had but one movement, which looked healthy. I ordered the glyco-thymoline kept up for next twenty-four hours, at the end of which time I pronounced the child cured.

COMMENT:—If the doctor had had experience with a few of our specific pain-relieving remedies for abdominal pain, I am sure he would not have made the above statement concerning the use of opium or paragoric. An exact knowledge of the application of minute doses of colocynth or dioscorea or chamomile would so quickly relieve the pain and promote the action of his intestinal antiseptic, that he would soon forget that he had ever used opium in children's cases. I have used the above remedy in much the same dose as he advises it, with a very small quantity of that one of the three remedies for pain named above, which was specifically indicated, or if there was only a general atonicity with a very small quantity of capsicum, and have had the best of results. In certain cases nux vomica or very small doses of lobelia will promptly and permanently relieve the pain.

Ellingwood's Therapeutist, Vol. 2, 1908, was edited by Finley Ellingwood M.D.