CHRONIC GASTRIC INDIGESTION
Everyone who sees many sick infants is familiar with the symptomatology of chronic gastric indigestion at this age. It seldom occurs in the breast-fed, but develops, as a rule, after a longer or shorter period of bad artificial feeding. Vomiting is the most prominent symptom, occurs without any definite relation to the time of taking food and is never explosive. The amount of the vomitus rarely exceeds that of the food taken at the last feeding and the vomitus usually shows evidences of disturbance of the gastric digestion. The stools often present the evidences of an associated intestinal indigestion, but constipation, as the result of the reduction in the amount of food retained, is not uncommon. The stools are, however, never of the starvation type, but show by their characteristics that food is passing from the stomach into the bowel. There is never any visible peristalsis and,