Volume 1

A practical treatise on the management and diseases of children / By R.T. Evanson and H. Maunsell.

  • Evanson, Richard T. (Richard Tonson), 1806-1871.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on the management and diseases of children / By R.T. Evanson and H. Maunsell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    105/502 (page 95)
    SP aiation, inducing disorders of the digestive organs, and ultimately leading to a cachectic state, in which the glandular system becomes implicated, and mesenteric disease, at length, established. A few forms of disease of the skin appear only in infancy; some are most liable to occur during childhood; and all are modified by the influence of that age: but a large class is to be found in the adult alone. Diseases of the urinary organs are not very frequent or formidable in the child; but a disordered state of the urine often exists even in newly born infants, and is easily induced by derangement of the digestive organs, when a deposit, mostly white, (appearing as the urine cools, or remaining after it has evaporated,) makes its appear- ance; or the urine is passed white, in the first instance. Gravel often forms in the child, particularly in the children of the poor, or in the offspring of gouty and dyspeptic parents; but this usually consists of lithic acid, and is presented in the state of a red deposit, or as an amorphous sediment, and passed without irritation of the urinary organs ; or in the form of crystallized lithic acid, and accom- panied in its passage by irritation more or less severe. Attention to these circumstances is most important, that we may, by timely interference, prevent the formation of calculus, to which children— at least, the children of the poor*—are peculiarly liable. The ealculus will, in this instance, mostly consist of the lithate of ammonia, being generally of a clay colour and small size, as occurring princi- pally in children. (See Prout on Diseases of the Urinary Organs. ) Symptoms of dysuria, however, are not confined to cases of stone in the bladder, but will attend irritation or inflammation of that organ itself, or of the abdominal viscera, as in the adult. Even ischuria, or total suppression of urine, may originate in this latter cause OF more directly from disease of the kidney. Absence of the urinary secretion is often a remarkable symptom in the febrile attacks of * Sir Benjamin Brodie remarks, in his Lectures on the Urinary Organs, that the deposit of red sand which occurs in adults among the rich, is found principally in children among the poor; among whom, also, children are much more liable to calculi than adult persons. And this from the same cause, though originating in a different source, namely, derangement of the digestive organs caused, in the rich, by indolence and luxurious living; but in the chil- dren of the poor, by unwholesome diet and neglect: so do extremes meet. [Note to 4th Edition. ] pf