Should fever patients be fed?
Diet in
Fever
Q. Should fever
patients be fed?
A. It is highly important that fever patients should
receive a proper amount of food and food of the right sort. Physiologic
experiments have shown that during fever, especially when the temperature is
high, the muscles, glands and blood are rapidly destroyed. This is the reason for the great weakness as well as emaciation of the fever
patient whose temperature has run very high for some days. From careful
investigations may reached the conclusion that the destruction of the tissues
in fever is due to the lack of
carbohydrates. More recently conducted experiments show that by feeding an
abundance of carbohydrates the wasting of the muscles and the extraordinary
weakening of the body which frequently occurs may be prevented. This is a matter
of very great importance. It is also
interesting to note that these scientific experiments confirm the practical
observations made long ago by physicians that the best diet for fever patients
consists of farinaceous preparations, fruits and fruit juices. Neimeyer, the
eminent German physician, fed his fever patients on fruit soup, a very popular
dish in Germany. Hippocrates, the noted physician of ancient Greece, recommended
for fever patients a thin gruel prepared from barley-"ptisan."
The starvation plan of treating fever patients is
known to be positively dangerous and should be abandoned. The diet should consist
of fruits, fruit juices and cereal preparations. The juice of fresh or
dried fruits is greatly to be preferred to cooked fruits for the reason that
cooking destroys the precious vitamines of which the fever patient stands greatly
in need. VonHoesslin demonstrated long ago that fever patients
should be given quite a liberal
supply of food of
the right sort to prevent the great weakening which is certain to occur
from the combined influence of the fever processes and starvation.