Under this familiar term, which includes the mildest looseness of the bowels as well as the severest symptoms of cholera and dysentery, may be included the greater part of the morbidity of the nursling. Death certificates of babies, especially in summer months, chiefly specify this cause. The diarrhoea makes itself felt in a variety of ways. If conjoined with vomiting we may term it a gastro-enteritis, and state that a given child died from inability to profit by its nourishment. But many infants succumb, not because their nourishment is rejected outright, but rather from the fact that it is not utilized. We can understand death when due to violent vomiting and diarrhoea; but the slow death from non-utilization of food, such as occurs so extensively in bottle-fed tenement house children, still remains largely a mystery, which has been explained in the most diverse ways. The amount and character of gastro-intestinal disturbance present is not sufficient, in many cases at least, to explain the total failure of nutrition. It is in the effort to combat this condition that so many methods of feeding have come into use. As in all stubborn and imperfectly understood conditions, with a bad outlook for recovery, many substances have been tested, and many recoveries have been recorded. If a threatening diarrhoea appears, with or without vomiting, the best course to pursue at first seems to be fasting. Sterile water may be allowed but milk is prohibited. It is believed by some authorities that cow's milk or the milk of any animal is poisonous in these cases. Others would state that milk is dangerous because of one or another solid ingredient, or because it furnishes a culture medium for germs. In any case some pre-digested food like panopepton, or some cereal decoction like rice or barley water seems better borne. It may also be advisable at this stage to use certain drugs to control vomiting. When the latter has ceased for twenty-four hours, normal feeding may be cautiously resumed. The treatment of these cases taxes the utmost resources of the physician, and the mortality is enormous. The nurse's duties lie rather in the direction of prevention; but if these cases develop, rest of the stomach is imperative at first and milk must not be resumed until all symptoms are passed. Diarrhoea, dysentery and all gastrointestinal troubles in older children are dieted on the same principles as are the same affections in adults.

Constipation in nurslings is a condition difficult to overcome entirely by diet. The familiar remedies are sugar and cream, an excess of either of which, over dietetic requirements, may loosen the bowels. A prescription of laboratory milk may meet this obstacle, or the corresponding home modification. Fruit juices, oatmeal gruel, etc., are sometimes employed.

Marasmus and Rickets are two conditions generally included under diseases amenable to diet. Infantile Scurvy should be named in the same connection. There is no special regimen, however, for such affections. A full normal diet cannot be improved on.