SIMON DE VALLAMBERT ON THE TREATMENT OF DIARRHEA IN INFANTS (1565)

[摘要] Little is known of Simon de Vallambert (fl. 1555-1565) the author of the first printed work on pediatrics in French. His book, Cinq Livres de la Manière de Nourrir et Gouverner les Enfans des Leur Naissance , was published in 1565 at Poictiers [Poitiers]. It is a single volume of 379 pages measuring about six by nine inches.Like a few of his predecessors, his book was written as much for nurses and midwives as for physicians. Simon de Vallambert, although greatly influenced by ancient writers, has a mind of his own, and a common sense far in advance of most of the medical writers of the sixteenth century.1His treatment of infants suffering from diarrhea was as follows2:As soon as one sees that the flux of the stomach persists too long, that is to say, that the infant is weakened by it, it is time to restrain it, but with discretion: for if it is green and yellow and the child big, it should first be given, if it is possible, a little powdered rhubarb with syrup of dried roses and on the next day a clyster of a decoction of barley and plantain with a very little roast honey, then another of starch and the juice or decoction of plantain, or of other astringent things, with roast oil and quince oil or the like: cover the stomach with linen moistened with distified water, or a decoction of myrrh, of roses, or of plantain: then a plaster of sandol, roses, Armenian bole and the like, incorporate an astringent oil with a piece of wax: or a cataplasm of spelt (?) or of rye, cooked in vinegar and sprinkled with the said oil: give starch to eat in the form of broth and lettuce cooked in vinegar and water: make them drink at meals and between of the syrup of grenadine, or of quince or of dried roses with chalybeate water .... For drink, goats' milk to which one has added steel, or of water prepared the same, alone or with syrup of quince, or of dried roses and sometimes of service berries: the same syrup may be drunk between meals if there is thirst, with syrup of mint and iron water ....

[学科分类] 儿科学