The mother's manual of children's diseases / by Charles West.

  • West, Charles, 1816-1898.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The mother's manual of children's diseases / by Charles West. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    quick and regular in the first stage; irregular and slower in the second; quick, variable, irregular from time to time in the third ; growing more rapid and more feeble as the end arrives. Squinting, stupor, dilated pupil, difficulty of swallowing, tremulous limbs, convulsions, profound insensibility, such are the series of occurrences which bring on death usually within a fortnight, always within three weeks from the appearance of the first decided symptoms. What are you to do in these cases ? Above all save your- selves the heartbreak of feeling that you have overlooked the premonitory symptoms of the disease. Guard with special care the health of any child in whose family a disposition to con- sumptive disease has ever shown itself, and keep it at any cost from the risk of catching the hooping cough or measles. Since, too, it is not in early infancy, but after the age of one year, and in the majority of instances between the ages of three and six years that this disease occurs, that is to say, at the time when the brain begins to be most actively exercised, when the new world on which the child is just entering brings with it new wonders every day; be very careful not to over-stimulate its intelligence, over-excite its imagination, or over-strain its mental powers. After the age of ten the great danger is over ; up to that time it is the health of the body which requires care ; not fuss, not rearing like a hothouse plant, but the healthy training that may fortify the system. When any signs such as I have described indicate the threatening of disease, do not look on them as within the scope of domestic management, but place the child at once under the watchful care of a skilful doctor. I have seen but one recovery in all my life, after the disease had fully set in, and that was a recovery almost worse than death. Earache.—There is another form of inflammation of the brain which is likewise oftenest met with in children who are of weakly constitution, or of scrofulous habit, or in whom scarlet fever has left behind that very troublesome ailment, discharge from the ear. This is so tedious, so difficult to cure, so apt to return under the influence of very slight causes, that people are