Childhood Ailments Part 5. Harry Benjamin N.D.
Compiled and edited by Ivor Hughes.
Meningitis.
Cerebro-spinal meningitis is an acute disease or fever attacking the inner lining of the spinal cord and brain tissue. It is perhaps the most serious of all the acute diseases of childhood, and is the outcome of wrong treatment of previous childhood and infantile disease along orthodox lines, in most cases. The attack usually begins with convulsions, violent headache, and high fever. The pain extends into the back of the neck and down the spine, the head is drawn backward, the back is rigid, the abdomen is normal or retracted, and constipation is obstinate. There is frequently delirium, which may be active, but there is often stupor and finally unconsciousness. In some cases spots appear upon the face and body, which have given the disease the name of " spotted fever."The cause, as already indicated, is wrong feeding plus the suppressive medical treatment of previous infantile and childhood disease, although a blow or fall may sometimes be the superficial initiating cause.
Treatment.�If left in orthodox medical hands, the treatment for meningitis is very unlikely to lead to anything in the slightest .nature resembling a real cure. Most often the child dies under the treatment, or, if it recovers, the recovery is attended with all kinds of subsidiary ailments, such as deafness, blindness, partial paralysis, etc. The real treatment for meningitis, as for all other fevers, no matter which, is fasting ; but cases of meningitis should always be left to a competent Naturopath to handle where at all possible.
Fasting, the use of the cold pack, the warm-water enema, etc., will all help to bring about the ultimate recovery of the child suffering from meningitis ; and being placed thereafter on to a sensible dietary, it will be in far better health after the disease than it was before, something which can not be said for the unfortunate patients treated along orthodox lines. (See also Section 13. )
St. Vitus Dance (Chorea).
This disease consists of involuntary and irregular movements of many muscles or groups of muscles of the body. They are not under the control of the will, and are usually made worse by efforts to control them. They are rarely present during sleep, and are increased by excitement, fatigue, or embarrassment.They commonly begin in the muscles of the hands or face, so that children thus afflicted are often punished for dropping things or making grimaces. The mental condition as a rule undergoes change. Recurrent attacks are sometimes foreseen by the mother by the irritability of the child and a change in its disposition. The tongue is often thick and the speech indistinct. The disease runs a variable course. St. Vitus' dance is often closely associated with rheumatism in children, and, as with the latter, its cause is dietetic in origin ; although overwork at school and general nervous excitement may help on its occurrence in certain cases.
Treatment. The usual medical treatment for St. Vitus' dance is to give the child arsenic in the form of Fowler\'s solution This is undoubtedly the worst possible thing to do. It is loading the infant system with a most poisonous and harmful drug, and can lead to no ultimate good whatsoever. The real treatment for the complaint is as follows :
The child should be taken away from school at once and kept quietly at home. All reference to the condition of the child should be studiously avoided, and anything tending to heighten the nervous condition should be carefully prevented. Two or three days on the all-fruit diet, followed by the full diet for children given in the Appendix, is all the dietetic treatment needed in the less serious cases. Severe cases should be kept on fruit only for a week or longer if necessary, and rested in bed. The enema should be used nightly for the first few days of the treatment, and hot Epsom-salts baths once or twice a week will be extremely beneficial in all cases. A few days on fruit and milk, after the fruit diet, and before beginning the full diet, would be an advantage in many cases. For this the child has up to two pints of fresh unboiled milk daily with the fruit meals.
Rest, quietness and proper diet will bring the complaint to a close in the shortest possible time, but in the more serious cases a course of spinal manipulation would be very helpful. The child should be out in the open air so far as its condition permits, and anything conducive to increasing nervous strain, such as excessive reading, the learning of the piano, violin, etc., should be avoided for some considerable time after the disease has been cured. NO DRUGS WHATSOEVER SHOULD BE GIVEN.
PARASITIC DISEASES OF CHILDHOOD
Thread-worms. The thread-worm is a small round white worm
found in the large intestine and in the lower portion of the small
intestine. The rectum or lower end of the large intestine is the spot most
favoured by the parasite. The eggs are taken into the body by food or
water, and there hatch out. There is no difficulty in detecting either the
worms or the eggs, and the symptom which is ever present and prominent is
intense itching, which is more troublesome at night when the child is warm
in bed, and often prevents proper sleep.
Other symptoms are irritability and fretfulness, burning pain, restlessness, disturbance of the functions of the bowels and bladder, loss of appetite, and anemia. In sensitive children it is not unusual for convulsions and nervous twitching similar to St. Vitus' dance to be caused by the parasites.
Treatment. Although it is true that the eggs of the thread-worm are taken quite accidentally into the body of the child through the medium of food or water, and there hatch out, they could never breed in the intestines if they did not find there a suitable medium for their propagation. This medium is an intestinal tract clogged with effete matter and systemic refuse due to wrong feeding of the child. Thus, although the taking of the eggs into the child system is accidental, the real cause of the persistence of thread-worms there is the same for all the other diseases of childhood � namely, wrong feeding.
Orthodox medical treatment for thread-worms is concerned exclusively with the extermination of the parasites and their eggs by means of often dangerous chemical agents, and no attention whatsoever is paid to the underlying cause of the propagation of the parasite, which, as we have already pointed out, is a toxic condition of the infant intestinal tract. It is this latter which needs primary attention, and not so much the worms and eggs. These will automatically disappear when the food they live and breed on � the systemic refuse and waste matter in the intestine and rectum � has been got rid of. Once this point is seen, everything else is relatively simple.
The child should be kept on the exclusively fresh-fruit diet for up to a week, and then the diet for children given in the Appendix should be adopted, except that fatty foods, such as butter, cream, oil, etc., should be left out of the dietary for the time being, and meat and fish excluded also. In short, fruits, vegetables, milk and whole meal bread should almost exclusively form the dietary until the parasites have completely disappeared.
In some cases the all-fruit diet may have to be reverted to for a further few days at intervals, and in obstinate cases a short fast may have to be instituted. During the all-fruit or fasting period the bowel should be cleansed nightly with the warm-water enema, in the water of which may be infused a pinch of tobacco or a tea-spoonful of oil of turpentine. No drugs or medicinal agents of any kind should be used. The eating of sugary foods, such as jams, marmalade, white sugar, confectionery, etc., must be strictly forbidden. Only extreme rigidness with the dietary will pave the way for the complete eradication of the trouble once and for all.
The subject of children's ailments cannot be left without reference to bed-wetting and teething, which are accordingly being dealt with in the following special note :
Bed-wetting.
Bed-wetting in children of fairly advanced age is usually due to mental strain, induced by over-stimulation of the brain through excessive school work, incitement by parents to learn too much, etc., etc. In these cases what is therefore required is plenty of rest and quiet, and freedom from all undue mental activity and nervous excitement. As regards physical treatment, a few days on the all-fruit diet, with the use of the warm-water enema to cleanse the bowels, will be helpful, with the child menus given in the Appendix to follow. A daily cold sitz-bath will help to tone up the bladder; or, failing this, the parts in the region of the bladder should receive a daily sponging with cold water, or even twice daily. The child should be out in the fresh air as much as possible, and outdoor games should be encouraged in preference to indoor.Teething.
Practically every ailment which besets the child in the first two years of its life is set down to " teething." The term is a most convenient one, and usually satisfies both doctor and parent alike ; but the fact is that if a child is brought up properly as regards food and general hygiene, it will cut its teeth without any undue trouble at all. What is really caused by wrong feeding and wrong care of children is set down to a purely natural phenomenon which, in the ordinary way, should give the child no signs of its taking place at all, beyond a slight soreness of the gums, perhaps.Harry Benjamin ND.
End.
