"Dry Nights"

"Some of our country towns have lately come to have a Continental look," wrote the editor of the British Lancet last week, "for every morning every window is filled with bedding hung out to air in the sunshine. The scene is cheerful, but the householders are depressed; for the habit of bedwetting, in guests who are likely to stay a long time, is a serious tax on hospitality. . . . Somewhat unexpectedly, eneuresis has proved to be one of the major menaces to the comfortable disposition of evacuated urban children . . . and at a time of widespread domestic crisis we make no apology for offering a few dogmatic opinions and recalling some of the traditional remedies.

"If a child over three years old cannot hold his water, the child and the water should be examined." In most cases, the Lancet continued, the cause of bed-wetting is not physiological but psychological. "If the parent or guardian believes that (in Mr. Churchill's inspiring phrase) 'we have only to persevere to conquer,' she will communicate her belief. She will see also that the child has no fluids to drink after five o'clock, that he empties his bladder before he gets into bed, and that he is roused to void completely again at a later hour. Punishment is out of place." Each child should have a chart on which he pastes a gold star "in celebration of every dry night."

When such "simple methods" are not enough, the Lancet prescribed one-quarter to two grains of ephedrine sulphate at bedtime, depending on the child's age and bed-wetting capacities. "Tincture of belladonna is useful . . . given in amounts of ten minims [drops] for the younger child, and 15 minims for the older, half an hour before bedtime. The dose is increased weekly by five minims until eneuresis stops."

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