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DISEASES OF THE ORGANS OF DIGESTION. 389
Medicines are of no avail ; mild cases recover in spite
of them ; but I feel perfectly certain that fewer persons
in this country would have died of cholera, if there had
not been a doctor in it. The statistics of the disease
everywhere point
medicines often kill. I believe they
Cholera Infantum
scrofulous infants, who are exposed
to this conclusion. What are called
seldom cure.
is the fatal disease of weak and
to bad air and un
healthy conditions. It is especially the disease of
crowded populations. Among its causes, as given by
medical writers,
are dentition, improper food in all its
varieties, including the milk of a pregnant
m,other, or
one who uses the means to become so, want of cleanli
ness, heat, bad air, etc.
It comes on slowly, with feverishness and general
derangement of the whole sore digestive system, mouth,
fretfulness, thirst, vomiting, diarrhoea, tenesmus, or pain
ful straining at stools ; the abdomen is tender, the face
haggard, the limbs emaciate ; sometimes incessant cry
in others
ing, tossing of arms, and drawing up the feet ;
there is insensibility, approaching to coma. It may
carry off a child in one day ; or, where not hastened by
medicines, may last three months. Every summer,
during the hot season, hundreds of children die in New
York, every week, of this fatal disease.
Prevention is better than cure ; and the two indis
pensable means for either are good air and good food.
Change of air alone is often sufficient for a cure. If
we secure a patient good air, and give it very little food,
and that of undoubted purity ; if we bathe the skin, and
wrap the bowels in wet bandages; if we give the
wet-sheet pack as often as there is fever, and a