516 PEDIATRICS 



laws ever suited the degenerates against whom they were passed, 

 and it is unfortunate that while health and virtue are as a rule not 

 contagious, disease and vice are so to a high degree. 



Modern therapeutics, both hygienic and medicinal, has gained 

 much by the close observation of what is permitted or indicated 

 or required in early age. Since it has become more humane (re- 

 member it is hardly a century since Pinel took the chains off the 

 insane in their dungeons, and not more than half a century since 

 I was taught to carry my venesection lancet in my vest pocket 

 for ready use) and more scientific, so that whatever is outside of 

 strict biologic methods is no longer "a, system," but downright 

 quackery the terrible increase of the latter as a world-plague 

 is deemed by rational practitioners and the sensible public an appall- 

 ing anachronism. It appears that the states of the Union are most 

 anxious (and have been partially successful) to rid themselves of 

 it, while some at least of the nations of Europe are greater sufferers 

 than we. According to the latest statistics, there is one quack to 

 every physician in Bavaria and Saxony; ten quacks in Berlin, 

 with its emperor and other accomplishments, to every forty-six 

 physicians. Its general population has increased since 1879 by 

 61 %; the number of physicians, 170, 2 %; that of the quacks, 

 1600 %. 



One of the main indications in infant therapeutics is to fight 

 anemia, which is a constant danger in the diseases of the young, 

 for the amount of blood at that age is only one nineteenth of the 

 whole body- weight, while in the adult it is one thirteenth. The 

 newly-born is particularly exposed to an acute anemia. His blood 

 weighs from 200 to 250 grammes. It is overloaded with hemo- 

 globin which is rapidly eliminated, together with the original ex- 

 cess of iron. This lively metabolism renders the infant very amen- 

 able to the influence of bacteria, and the large number of acute, 

 sub-acute, or chronic cases of sepsis is the result. Besides, the 

 principal normal food is milk, which contains but little iron. That 

 is why pediatrics is most apt to inculcate the lessons of appropriate 

 posture, so as not to render the brain suddenly anemic, and of 

 proper feeding and of timely stimulation before collapse tells us 

 we are too late, and the dangers of inconsiderate depletion. The 

 experience accumulated in pediatric practice has taught general 

 medicine to use small doses only of potassic chlorate; large doses 

 of strychnine and alcohol in sepsis, of mercuric bichloride in croup- 

 ous inflammations, of heart stimulants, such as digitalis, when a 

 speedy effect is wanted, of arsenic in nervous diseases, of potassic 

 iodide in meningitis; it has warned practical men of the dangers 

 of chloroform in status lymphaticus; * it has modified hydrother- 



1 In the meeting of the Society for the Study of Disease in Children, May 27, 



