Lectures on children's diseases : A handbook for practitioners and students.

  • Henoch, E. H. (Eduard Heinrich), 1820-1900.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on children's diseases : A handbook for practitioners and students. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    disappears. You have, therefore, nothing to do heyond seeing that the mucous membrane of the mouth is not subjected to any severe irritation. The second variety has a much more characteristic aspect. Like the first, it is usually called thrush by the public ; and by medical men it is called aphthous stomatitis.1 Most of the children whom I have seen suffering from this disease were at the age of dentition, i.e., between the 7th month and the middle of the 3rd year. One child of 14 months had had as many as five attacks since he was 4 months old. These always came on with the eruption of a group of teeth, and then at once disappeared. It is less common for this affection to occur either before or after dentition, and in these cases we must assume some other unknown influence besides the irritation of the teeth. Besides the symptoms which have been described under simple stomatitis (which, however, are generally more severe in those cases), we observe greyish-yellow or greyish- white spots from the size of a pin's head to that of a pea and larger, situated on the margin, tip, and dorsum of the tongue— less commonly on its lower surface and near the frsenum. These are surrounded by a narrow red border; they are round and occasionally somewhat indented in outline. Between these there are also patches of an elongated form, either so few in number that they may be easily counted, or perhaps very numerous, sometimes lying close together and here and there coalescing so as to form greyish-white plaques or sinuous figures. In a few cases I have seen greyish-white patches of a firm consistence about the size of a sixpence, rising above the level of the mucous membrane, on which their edges lay loosely like those of a fungus. We often also see plaques of a varying size on the mucous membrane of the cheeks, the hard and soft palate and even on the tonsils, also on the lips which are reddened and much swollen so as to project like a snout. When we examine these patches, or when the children touch them, they are apt to bleed and then they become covered with dark-brown or blackish crusts of dried blood. Groups of herpetic vesicles on the margins of the lips and whitish-grey excoriations at the angles of the mouth are not uncommon accompaniments; and, owing to tbe enlargement of the submaxillary lymphatic glands, which can 1 Synonym: stomatitis fibrinosa, follicnliris.