Alfred F. Hess

DUTY OF PHYSICIANS IN URGING ECONOMY OF FOODSTUFFS

To the Editor: —There is danger of shortage in the food supply, particularly of wheat foodstuffs. Every effort, therefore, should be made to meet this contingency. Physicians should realize that they can help in this important form of preparedness. At the present time, the kind of flour which is employed most widely, the patent flour, contains only from 60 to 65 per cent of the wheat berry. The remainder is utilized mainly for cattle feed. Flour which is made of 75 per cent. of the wheat berry is only a little darker in color than the patent flour, and the bread made from it is only slightly less white. Its cost is less and its nutritional value is great, as it contains the bran and the embryo, which have particular virtues. From an economic point of view, it would seem desirable to substitute the coarser type of flour for one

THE MOUTH-DRIP: A METHOD OF ADMINISTERING FLUID TO INFANTS IN GASTRO-ENTERITIS (ALIMENTARY INTOXICATION)

In the acute gastro-intestinal disturbances of infants, an excessive loss of fluid constitutes one of the greatest dangers to which the infants are subjected. Metabolism studies have shown this, and it is evident to even the casual observer. The dry skin, the parched mouth, the sunken eyes, the depressed fontanel, are striking evidences of a marked depletion of the body fluids. This condition is seen in its greatest intensity when the watery stools are marked and frequent and vomiting is repeated; but it is encountered also in those cases which are mainly toxic in character and which preeminently deserve Finkelsteins appellation of alimentary intoxication. In such eases there may be little or no vomiting, the diarrhea may have almost ceased, and yet the extreme prostration, the apathy or semistupor afford unmistakable evidence that the situation is critical. At this time, we know, food must be at first entirely withheld, and

THE PROPHYLAXIS AND TREATMENT OF SUMMER DIARRHEA

There is hardly any subject in pediatrics about which more has been written than the one which I am to treat in this paper. This disease, or group of diseases, has suddenly come to be considered of national importance, to be compared in its ravages only with tuberculosis, and worthy of the full attention of national boards of health and of economists. It is, therefore, very clear that, in the short space of this paper, there can be no thought of covering the treatment of a disease of this magnitude, and that I must confine myself rather to a broad consideration of the principles involved. It would also seem that at the present time the subject is in such a chaotic state—for we can find authority for almost every conceivable method of feeding—that it would be untimely and to little purpose to go beyond the consideration of general principles into