Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-04-13
Your Baby, and Mine
BY MYRTLE MEYER ErDRED.

Mothers write me frequently asking
that 1 work out diets for their babies
| VINO are suffering from eczema. am
| going to tell YOU about two cases have
Encountered recently, merely to indi-
| cate how impossible such Q request IS
| to fulfill
Baby No. is 8 years old. He has
suffered all Of his life from both ee-
zema and asthma daey are usually Que
| TO the same causes. Es has been UNI
der the care of successive physicians
and has had his arms tied down almost
from the first in order to prevent
scratching, and has been salved with
every ointment any one has ever heard
| of to heal the rash. This last Winter
| he had hundreds Of scratch skin tests
made in an attempt to discover Just
| what foods in his diet 0r what irritants
| in his environment could possibly be
| causing his distress.
| 1t was discovered that he reacted
very strongly to milk, meat. chicken,
wheat cereals, bananas, eggs, cream,
| bacon and butter, showing that he had
| a marked intolerance for prote.ns ana
| fats (two of the colnmonest causes Oh
| ec2ema). In addition, he was most
| sensitive to cats and house dust and
| feathers. If he slept ON anything but
| q IuD0SA lll1OWs VI q AesV CtthAS AANNA AAAAAA
or he was in a dusty room, he suffered
! all night with asthma.
BY excluding all these irritants from
! his environment and keeping him on
a rigid diet, (and you can see how linz
| tied this would be-, the child has I'M
| proved remarkably.
The second child is a large baby,
| less than one year old, very much
overweight. His face when first seen
was so covered with scabs and rash
| that one could hardly discover a face,
| lie had been in hospital for treat
ment, the face had cleared somewhat,
SO he was taken home and brought
| back in week as bad as ever.
| What had happened there? The
mother had simply failed to stick to
| the diet outlined for her and the &C.
zema was right on the job again.
| In this case the baby was fed about
six times a day with milk, and at
three meals daily had macaroni and at
least once a day an egg. No vegetables
or fruits of any kind were in the diet.
| The mother was advised to cut down
| the amount of milk to one-half, to eH-
| clude eggs altogether and to use some
other carbohydrate, such as various
kinds of green vegetables, instead OF
| the macaroni. In enc week the child
was hardly recognizable, his face had
cleared so wonderfully. 1t was discov-
cred that she still gave him too much
milk, and by impress!ng upon her that
it was imperative for her to follow oil
| rections, if she wanted to cure the baby
it was hoped that this poor infant would
know some peace.
So in curing eczema one has to know
the common villains in the diet that
are most often to blame, and exclude
| them entirely. II that doesn't work,
try something else. Something is
wrong, sometimes two or more some
things" and one must try and try until
one finds exactly the diet that will pre-
vent the return of the rash. Mean
while, age helps, for children some
times outgrow these intolerances, and
salve helps to keep them comfortable
until they do or one discovers what to
eliminate to end the trouble.