A treatise on syphilis in new-born children and infants at the breast / by P. Diday ; translated by G. Whitley.

  • Diday, P. (Paul), 1812-1894.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on syphilis in new-born children and infants at the breast / by P. Diday ; translated by G. Whitley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    ON SYPHILIS IN NEW-BORN CHILDREN. actually m discussion, for it refers only to a syphilitic child M'hich tailed to infect the nurse, a subject which will be examined sepa- rately in the third part of this work. _ A thought strikes me, however, and may be applied to observa- tions of Cullerier as weU as to those of Eicord or Nonat, to whom le simply alludes by name. It is that these slirewd practitioners did not, doubtless, confine themselves strictly to the experimental confirmation of the fact. I know them too weU to suppose, for an instant, that, having before their eyes and visiting every morning a woman decidedly the subject of a secondary diathesis, they should have delayed a single day to administer specific remedies in the proper quantity. What becomes, then, with this course of action —otherwise eminently prudent and the only conscientious one— of the proof of the harmlessness of the poison, from the moment it IS sought, while observing it, to neutrahze it by administering its antidote ? I feel instinctively, better perhaps than I shall succeed in expressing it, that something more is wanting in all these results to raise them to the rank of proofs. Both the advocates and oppo- nents of transmission by the milk, commit, as it appears to me, a common error in reference to this question : that of applying the same standard of facts essentially different. Are we sufficiently cognizant of the possible effects of this impure food on the new- born child to be justified in affirming that it has produced no effect, solely because we do not see it followed by any of the phe- nomena of constitutional syphilis acquired by the usual mode of contagion ? May not tliis entirely special infiuence have its own pecuhar characteristics, modality, and period of development ^ When, for instance, we see sypliihs derived from the father not manifesting itself until at least nine months after birth, but then appearing in the most serious forms, why should not the milder and more gradual infiuence of lactation reveal itself by slighter and more tardy indications, by certain forms of scrofulous affection, by complications of intercurrent diseases, rather than by distinct and unequivocal symptoms? Is it absolutely necessary that there should be present, in a morbid state, the train of cojjper-coloiired spots, periosteal pains, or opalhie patches, before we can venture to affirm that syphilis may have had some part in its production ? Lastly, may not the milk of an infected nurse be capable of ren- dering syphilis in the child she is suckling less curable by specific