chapter on Affections of the Chest.

=Jaundice of New-born Children.=--A certain yellow tinge of the skin,
unattended by any other sign of jaundice, such as the yellowness of the
eye and the dark colour of the urine, is by no means to be confounded
with real jaundice. It is no real jaundice, but is merely the result of
the changes which the blood with which the small vessels of the skin are
overcharged at birth is undergoing; the redness fading as bruises fade,
through shades of yellow into the genuine flesh colour.

This is no disease, to be treated with the grey powder and the castor
oil wherewith the over-busy monthly nurse is always ready. It is a
natural process, which the intelligent may watch with interest, with
which none but the ignorant will try to interfere.

There is, however, beside this a real jaundice, in which the skin is
more deeply stained, the whites of the eyes are yellow, the urine
high-coloured, and in which the dark evacuations that carry away the
contents of the bowels before birth are succeeded by white motions, from
which the bile is absent. This condition is not very usual, save where
children have been exposed to cold, or where the air they breathe is
unwholesome. Of this no better proof can be given than is afforded by
the fact that in the Dublin Lying-in Hospital, where the children are
defended with the greatest care both from cold and from a vitiated
atmosphere, infantile jaundice is extremely rare, while it attacks
three-fourths of the children received into the Foundling Hospital of
Paris. Still it does sometimes occur when yet no cause can be assigned
for it, and it is noteworthy that it is sometimes met with in successive
infants in the same family.

As the respiratory function and that of the skin increase in activity,
the jaundice will disappear of its own accord. Great attention must be
paid during its continuance to avoid exposure of the child to cold,
while no other food than the mother's milk should be given. If the
bowels are at all constipated, half a grain of grey powder or a quarter
of a grain of calomel may be given, followed by a small dose of castor
oil, and the aperient will often seem to hasten the disappearance of the
jaundice; but in a large number of cases even this amount of medical
interference is not needed.

There is, indeed, a very grave form of jaundice, happily of excessive
rarity, due to malformation of the liver, to absence or obstruction of
the bile-d