PEDIATRICS Vol. 49 No. 3 March 1972, pp. 427
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WHAT AMERICAN PARENTS READ ABOUT COLIC IN 1860

T. E. C. Jr. M.D.

As every pediatrician knows, there is little really known about the causes of a type of abdominal pain in infants which every mother calls colic. Among the etiologic factors mentioned are: hunger and underfeeding, overfeeding and flatulence, hyperactivity, allergy, family tensions, and immaturity of the gastrointestinal tract. Treatment still remains largely a matter of trial and error and is generally unsatisfactory.

Dr. Henry S. Taylor writing in 1860 had this to say about colic.

The period when children are most liable to colic is from the age of one or two weeks till they have cut their first teeth. It shows itself by the tension or enlargement of the stomach, a drawing up of the knees toward the stomach, as if in pain, and an emission of wind from the stomach, which usually for a short time affords relief. It is frequently attended with costiveness and sometimes by vomiting. It arises usually from wet feet, or from the use of improper food, and is almost invariably attended with indigestion. Taken in its earliest stages, it is seldom difficult to cure, but is exceedingly debilitating, and if neglected becomes dangerous. We have known bilious colic to remove by death even an adult in five or six hours. Convulsions in children are not unfrequently caused by neglect of the colic.

Not unfrequent it has been found that the colic of the infant has arisen from the state of its mother system. In all such cases the health of the mother and her diet should be promptly attended to.