SOLUBLE FOOD. 



371 



and what kind of nutritious matter is most suitable 

 under the circumstances. 



It is of great importance that the nutritious matters 

 given in fever should be such as will not only be 

 readily absorbed, but quickly assimilated matters 

 capable of being taken up and applied to nutritive 

 purposes without undergoing those slow preliminary 

 changes which are requisite to convert the less soluble 

 constituents of ordinary-health diet into a fit state for 

 nourishing the tissues. In fever the solvent secretions 

 are not only very scanty, but their properties are 

 altered. The saliva, the gastric juice, the bile, and 

 the pancreatic fluids are all defective, and the organs 

 which secrete these important solutions, as well as 

 the numerous glands in every part of the digestive 

 tract, are seriously affected, and their action impaired. 

 For these reasons, great care should be taken in the 

 selection of the food, and the utmost precaution ex- 

 ercised in preventing the patient from having any 

 particles not likely to be readily digested, or anything 

 that has commenced to undergo the slightest putre- 

 factive change. In hot weather the nurse should be 

 particularly observant on the latter point, for the 

 most digestible foods very soon undergo decompo- 

 sition, and sometimes good beef-tea will be tainted in 

 a single night. For this reason it is important not to 

 use the patient's sick-room as a larder, the air of 

 which, irrespective of its temperature, is prone to 

 hasten putrefactive decomposition, and is no doubt 



