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136
Neurotic children are very common. The usual complaints are of
screaming, tantrums, terrors, bed-wetting, refusal to eat and refusal to
sleep. These things are the product of some fault in the environment.
Children have an advantage over adults in that if the environment is
changed and the fault removed, the neurosis promptly disappears. (In
adults neurosis is much more deeply ingrained and hard to get rid of.)
As soon, then, as the children are removed from their homes, the
tantrums, food-refusal or whatever it was promptly disappears; often,
indeed, with a magical suddenness as though it had never existed.
Pyloric Stenosis is a not uncommon condition in babies, in which,
owing to the spasmodic contraction of the pylorus or opening from the
stomach into the intestine, food cannot pass on from the stomach and is
rejected by violent vomitting. It starts to show itself two or three
weeks after birth.
One of our patients was transferred to hospital where an operation
relieved the condition. The child was bottle-fed and suffered from a
severe dyspepsia as well. The setting right of this was undertaken in the
wards. The other patient was older and the illness less severe. With
careful nursing and feeding it was restored to health without operation
and without being sent to hospital.
Stricture of the oesophagus is a rare congenital condition. The
patient was found to return quantities of the food taken in a way that
could not be accounted for by any ordinary diagnosis. The correct one
was made in hospital with the aid of X-rays. Hypernephroma is a very
malignant tumour growing in the region of the kidney. The patient was
admitted for wasting and fretfulness. A very small mass was found in
the loin, so small that its existence was doubtful. In a week it had
increased enormously. The child was transferred to hospital, where,
unfortunately, she died. One case remains to be described since no
satisfactory conclusion about it was ever reached. The patient was
admitted for persistent inability to take more than a little food. After
admission intractable vomiting set in. It was transferred to hospital,
and there presently succumbed. Of the real nature of this case we were
completely in the dark, and could only deplore the inability to help.
Cases of Malnutrition and Debility form a large part of the total.
These children always do very well, putting on pounds of weight and
increasing enormously in health, strength and good spirits.