A. JACOBI, M. D. 



47 



Many a cause of death may be avoided. Cold bathing, which 

 prevents or defers reaction ; hot bathing, which scalds the skin ; 

 improper washing and rubbing the baby's mouth, during which 

 the mucous membrane is corroded; wanton squeezing of the 

 baby's breasts will give rise to microbic infection and cause 

 sepsis, either in the shape of erysipelas or general blood poison- 

 ing just as the contact of a baby's eye with a certain infected 

 pus may produce blindness or prove fatal. Know the vicious 

 mistakes, and avoid them, and the babies will live, and your 

 infant mortality diminish. 



Mortality is also increased by the belief prevalent amongst all 

 to whom it should not concern that it is natural and even whole- 

 some for the new born to lose weight. What you may admit is 

 that a loss of five or seven ounces of weight during a few days 

 may be balanced on and after the third or fourth day. It has 

 been stated, however, that if the tenth day restores the weight 

 to the original, all is well. All is not well. Urination, perspira- 

 tion insensible or not and respiration will abstract water, with 

 and without salts, from the circulation and dessicate the tissues. 

 Ignorant treatment with honey, castor oil or rhubarb adds to the 

 danger. The loss begins on the first day. Some food and plenty 

 of fluid should be introduced. Some prominent German chil- 

 dren's doctors, I might use the name specialist if I could convince 

 myself that specialist sounds or is better than doctor Czerny and 

 Keller advise to treat the baby on tea and saccharin. Why tea 

 and saccharin? water is better. Better for other reasons also. 

 The kidneys of' the newborn have small impervious capillaries, 

 but large arteries. That predisposes to insufficient circulation 

 in the soft embryonal organ. Asphyxia or congenital heart dis- 

 ease add to it. Now, inflammation Bright's disease is quite 

 frequent in the newly born or quite young. On and after the 

 second day of life for a week or more the urine often exhibits 

 yellow sand, consisting of uric acid. Water is required in plenty 

 to wash it out. If any of that sand remains, stones will form 

 indeed kidney stones in the very young are not at all infrequent, 

 or the kidney tissue is irritated so that blood may be admixed to 

 the urine. Not to give sterile water frequently to the newly 

 born, provokes illness and possibly death. Now as you are bent 

 upon removing infant mortality, you may possibly heed me. To 

 me and to many babies, the knowledge of the need of water has 

 been a source of gratification since Virchow published his paper 

 on "Uric Acid Infection," nearly eighty years ago. Disease of 

 the kidney, moreover, causes intestinal disease ; while, on the 

 other hand, intestinal disorders, mainly in the very young, cause 

 disorders of the kidneys. 



