SECTION II.. Symptoms of Emptiness or Starvation, Which May Lead to Cholera.

SYMPTOMS OF EMPTINESS OR STARVATION, WHICH MAY LEAD TO CHOLERA.

If, as heretofore mentioned, the solid or nutritive principle of the milk has been withheld from the babe by adulteration in any way, the blood becomes watery, the fat cells cannot develop, the tissues that hold the fluid with which to moisten the parts dries away, and the flesh becomes soft or skinny. The milk may be nutritive, too, and yet for some reason fail to mix with the juices in the stomach so as to insure healthy blood.

These facts, however, are seldom found out by a casual medical attendant until the powers of digestion are too weak to derive much benefit from another kind of diet. Besides, the expense of the articles mostly ordered by physicians renders a trial almost out of the question. There are, however, many articles of nourishment obtainable, which, if perseveringly administered, will do much to assist in building up the little frame.

The most marked of the signs that may end in cholera are vomiting, dulness of the eyes, rolling the head, as if to rock, spitefully crying when taken up to be changed, and begging for everything, as they say; also crying, if old enough, for the very things no one thinks it should have. If a child could have some of what it smells and craves, at such times, no doubt but that recovery would commence. But a general languidness of the whole system, and a loathing of the sight of a bottle or its accustomed food, shows signs of certain destruction. In the last stage the child screams faintly, starts at the sound of almost anything; sometimes the breathing is scarcely perceptible. The discharges from the bowels are seldom white and frothy, as in the last stage of acute cholera; owing, perhaps, to the fact that the diet has been continued in the former, whereas in the latter all food is generally suspended during treatment, except it be fluids of the mildest nature; unlike in the last stage of consumption, when the little sufferer seems to watch every movement of its nearest friend, sometimes rising half way up to look about, then falling back exhausted, it now lies quiet.

It may be remarked just here that infants affected with inanition or starvation, consumption and cholera, most invariably retain to the last hour their instinct to suck, whether it be of the bottle or of the breast. It is a well-known fact that infants who were nearly destroyed by starvation from being fed on poor milk by hand, have been successfully raised by being put on breast-milk.