Eczema in young children is often due to dietetic errors, and in all cases care should be exercised to cure it by regulation of the food. The commonest fault in feeding young children consists in giving them too much starchy food, which they cannot as yet digest, and the innumerable prepared infant foods, consisting largely of starches and sugars, are responsible for much of this trouble. Some parents, aware of this fact, go to the other extreme, and give the child too much animal food in the form of meat juice, broths, and eggs. A diet improperly balanced in either direction induces an anaemic condition with a special tendency to the development of eczema. Older children should be denied candy, chocolate, and indulgence in sweets of all sorts, and must be fed upon the simplest diet, in which starch, and especially sugar, should be reduced, and pure fat increased. The latter is to be prescribed in the form of cream, fresh uncooked butter, fat beef, and cod-liver oil. Bulkley recommends the use of whole-meal bread, cracked wheat, hominy, and corn grits with salt and butter or cream.

Oatmeal is prohibited; likewise tea and coffee.