The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

14 The Health Bulletin August, 1927
there is any rise of temperature or
any other condition indicating that
all is not well.
Treatment
Put the child in bed and keep it
there; give it plenty of water to
drink. Give little food except soups,
hot gruels and custards; but a liberal
quantity of lemonade, orange juice
and grape juice may be allowed.
Send for the family physician and
leave the matter of drugs, if any are
needed, up to him. It ought not to
be necessary to add that a report
should be made at once to the health
department, a placard secured and
placed on the front of the house or
apartment and all other children
kept away.
DOG DAYS BAD FOR MANY BABIES
For very old people the month of
August is generally one of the happiest
months of the year, and for
very young babies it is often one of
the most miserable and dangerous
periods. It is a time of sultry days
and still, hot nights. For the people
who believe in breeding flies, these
pests are more plentiful than ever,
and unless the baby is protected from
their onslaught flies alone are a serious
menace to its health and com-
Babies react much more quickly
fort.
and readily than adults to excessive
heat. The same degree of heat that
will cause the ordinary adult to be
irritable and uncomfortable will do
many times more than that for the
baby. Experiments carried out scientifically
have shown conclusively
that in periods of prolonged excessive
hot weather that the temperatures of
babies otherwise well will often rise
tv/o or three degrees unless every
precaution is directed toward preventing
such an occurrence. August
is a month of suspended activities in
many lines of business. Every adult
who can feels like going visiting, taking
a vacation, and in other ways
breaking the ordinary routine of his
life. Naturally when there are babies
in the family, they are helpless and
cannot resist the actions of their parents,
even though detrimental to the
baby's best welfare. Babies will be
dragged around to picnics, to swimming
parties, off on visits to distant
relatives, on excursions of one kind
and another, to protracted meetings in
the country, to moving pictures in
town, and to many other places which
are in themselves dangerous to them
at any time, but especially in very hot
weather. For baby and adult the
month of August and other days in
mid-summer can be made the happiest
of the whole year. This can
be done very easily, in the first place,
by keeping the baby at home. It
cannot be written dov/n too many
times and told to too many people
that home is the best place for a
baby all the year round, but especially
in the summertime. It might be well
for us to enumerate some of the
things that may be done to safeguard
the baby's health at this time.
If it is a breast-fed baby, there is
no need to worry about the food it
should be given; but the water that
it drinks should be boiled and cooled
before giving to the baby. If it is
not a breast-fed baby, every drop of
milk that is given it should be boiled
as carefully as the water for at least
three minutes. The items of food
proper for the baby, suitable to its
age, should be prepared with extreme
care and kept free from flies or other
deterioration caused by the heat.
The baby's clothing should be reduced
to a minimum and kept so throughout
the hot weather. Often a simple
mosquito netting shirt for the baby
crawling around, to protect from the
few flies that may be impossible to
prevent, together with a simple diaper
is often sufncient clothing for days
at a time. At night, generally be-