Southern Medical and Surgical Journal - Georgia Regents University

—42 Acute Peritonitis in Infants. [January,fit from antiphlogistics and emollients, to combine the mercurialpreparations with these, when the occasion presentsitself.We are not, however, very sanguine as to the eventual resultof this combined treatment, for death arrives so promptlyin this disease, that we can hardly believe that constitutionaltherapeutical agents can have time to act.Case III. Acute peritonitis; volvulus; death.—Since werecorded the preceding observations, we have met with a thirdcase of peritonitis in anew-born child, complicated with volvu-:lus. This is its historyA female child, born at the Maternity, was brought to thehospice on the 22d of March, 1853, the seventh day after hisbirth. It was a large infant, of good constitution. Its bodywas covered by psoriasis guttata. Suspecting a specific cause,although we could not detect the opaline border which Biettregards as the pathognomonic sign of the venereal affection,we confided the child to a nurse who was already taking mercurialpreparations for the cure of a syphilitic child whom shewas nursing.Until the sixth day after her admission, we observed nothingin the little patient ; she nursed well, slept well, her functionswere well performed, the eruption did not progress; but, onthe 28th, we found a radical and menacing change in her situation.The abdomen was tense ; there was considerable meteorism,exquisite sensibility, dullness above the pubes, short and hurriedrespiration ; the countenance was anxious; the eyes werefixed; the limbs were motionless; the child cried when shewas moved ; she had not urinated since the preceding evening;no vomiting; constipation; feverish pulse; cold extremities;the eruption had faded.The catheter was passed, but it did not evacuate a singledrop of urine. The child was placed in a hot bath, with thehope of bringing back the eruption ; the abdomen was fomented,emollient injections were administered, and a table-spoonfulof the syrup of manna.In the afternoon of the 28th, the patient vomited yellowishmatters resembling faeces to the eye, but inodorous. The psoriasishad completely disappeared. The little patient was expiring.A catheter introduced into the bladder and also into therectum brought away neither urine or faeces. The diagnosishad been written over the patient's cradle :—Acute peritonitisanal volvulus.