The mother's medical adviser : on the diseases and management of children, with recipes / [by Thomas Wakley].

  • Wakley, Thomas, 1795-1862.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The mother's medical adviser : on the diseases and management of children, with recipes / [by Thomas Wakley]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    minutes, and is commonly terminated by expectoration of mucus, sometimes by vomiting, occasionally by bleeding at the nose, an epileptic paroxysm, or complete exhaustion. In mild cases the fits seldom occur more than three or four times a day. In severe ones, they harass the patient every half hour; the least emotion of mind or exertion of body will bring them on. The child is often aware of the approach of the fit, and lays hold of any thing near him for support. He finds relief by stooping forward, and by support given to the head and back. When once the disease has assumed its regular form, the appetite is good; or rather the patient is never easy unless the stomach contains some kind of food, which relieves the fit ot coughing, and generally terminates it by vomiting it up; hence children as it were by natural instinct, crave for food immediately after a paroxysm of coughing. The tongue is usually clean and moist, and there is no difficulty of breathing in the intervals of the fit. The further progress and duration of hooping cough are subject to great variety: it generally lasts from two to six or seven months, 'flic disease, when terminating fatally, arises either from marasmus or low fever, with hectic, brought on by exhaustion, hydrocephalus, inflam¬ mation of the lungs, consumption, epilepsy or con¬ vulsions. TREATMENT. An open state of the bowels is almost essential to the favourable progress of the disease. An occasional dose of rhubarb, combined with carbonate of potash or soda, will be of advantage, not onlv in mildly acting ' O' J 9 t , • s upon the bowels, but also in correcting acidity, ^lueh in this disease is very apt to arise. Strong purgatives should never be given, for vny frequently an attack of diarrhera supervenes. \\hi< h no