The experience of Comby with infantile scurvy is illuminating. Among the
fifty-five cases which he has seen, the diagnosis was erroneous in
forty-five, and among thirteen cases recently met with, the physician
failed to recognize the disorder in all but two. The infants had been
given sodium salicylate, had been treated with electricity and massage
for the supposed acute poliomyelitis, or given mercury for syphilis, or
incisions or trephining had been carried out for acute osteomyelitis.
Some had been put into plaster casts for coxalgia or for Potts' disease.
This experience requires little comment. It should be added, however,
that in the course of an epidemic of poliomyelitis, such mistakes are
apt to happen, and, to our knowledge, did occur in the recent epidemic.
In regard to "_the pseudo-paralysis" of congenital syphilis_ diagnosed
as scurvy, it should be remembered that this lesion occurs almost always
before the fifth month of life. A history of previous papular eruption,
the bilateral enlargement of the epitrochlear glands, and the Wassermann
test should suffice to establish the correct diagnosis.
Besides the clinical conditions enumerated above, we may add the
following, which have been confused with scurvy: Neuritis, hemorrhagic
nephritis, calculus of the urinary tract, renal tumor, orbital tumor,
appendicitis, peritonitis, pleurisy and pneumonia. Holt writes as
follows: "I have known two cases to be operated upon by eminent
surgeons, once with a diagnosis of sarcoma and once of ostitis of both
tibiæ. Not until the subperiosteal hemorrhages and epiphyseal
separations were discovered was the nature of the trouble suspected."
Recently we saw a case of fracture of the distal end of the femur
diagnosed as infantile scurvy; the baby had caught its thigh between the
bars of the crib and snapped the bone in trying to extricate itself.
Finkelstein adds acute endocarditis, hemorrhagic septicæmia with
multiple bone swellings, and leukæmia as having been confused with
scurvy.
In an interesting account of scurvy in the Russian army during the
recent war, Hoerschelmann states that tired soldiers at times feign
scurvy. They produce a "pseudo-scurvy" by means of scratching the gums
with their nails or rubbing them with tobacco, and at the same time
bring about hemorrhages of the skin by means of trauma.
Scurvy in the breast-fed infant has been fully considered under
etiology. We wish merely to state again that one cannot be too cautious
in venturing this diagnosis in a nursing baby. The great majority of
reported cases are not scurvy, but bacterial infections, syphilis, or
various forms of intoxication. In establishing a diagnosis the same
principles hold as in the case of bottle-fed infants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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