Arnica. In cases where there is hemorrhage from the nose and mouth, and great strangling and suffocation. The case seems almost hopeless. In such cases a few doses of Arnica will do much good.
Arsenicum. The symptoms are much aggravated by the least exercise. Much emaciation; cold sweat’ great debility.
Calcarea c. This remedy may be indicated in leucophlegmatic children, with large, open fontanelles; the head perspires very much.
Carbo vegetabilis The veins stand out very full, and are remarkably blue.
China. In some collapsed stages, with waxy paleness and coldness of the skin.
Digitalis. The child can hardly be turned, or its position changed without causing fainting, or nearly so, and almost always causing vomiting. The eyelids, tongue and nails become very blue; pulse unequal, or very slow.
Lachesis. When the suffocating spells and the increased blueness become worse after sleeping. Great tenderness of all flesh; it is exceedingly difficult to handle the child at all; the least touch seems to hurt it, and to leave a deeper blueness, like a bruise.
Laurocerasus. This remedy has cured, for me, permanently some very bad cases of this disorder; with the following indications: A little exercise produces a gasping for breath and increased blueness. The ends of the fingers and toes are knobby, larger than any portion of these extremities. The child is better when lying still.
Phosphorus. In very tall and slim children, with much oppression of the respiration, and welling of the feet.
Secale c. In very thin, scrawny children, with shriveled skin; especially when there are spasmodic twitchings, sudden cries, feverishness, &c.
Sulphur. This remedy will be found useful in may cases characterized by the real sulphurous constitution.
ICTERUS.
The Icterus of new-born babes is scarcely to be considered and actual and distinct disease. It may indeed be caused by undue and prolonged exposure to cold of the tender and unprotected body of the infant immediately after birth. Often, however, it is the result of a more interior, physiological shock, which the system receive in changing from intra-uterine life to independent existence. From the second to the fourth day after birth, the entire surface of the skin, and also of the conjunctiva, may assume the yellow hue peculiar to this affection; this, continuing two or three days, gradually fades away, until by the eighth or tenth day, the natural, rosy-white color returns. The absence of other morbid phenomena, and the frequency of icterus among new-born babes, prove that this is not really a state of disease. Such at least is the opinion generally adopted; confirmed by the transitory nature of the affection itself. Seemingly it results from a slight interruption in the physiological action of the liver; or from the temporary hesitation which this organ experiences in adapting itself to the order of things in the independent state of existence. Or it may result from a temporary disturbance in the hepatic portion of the foetal circulation, from the same cause; and this condition will of course be particularly aggravated, as already stated, by exposure of the surface of the body to the cold air. The small amount of exercise the pregnant women take, and the costiveness that so frequently attends their condition, may have some influence in causing icterus gravidarum, and in consequence in predisposing to the same condition in the new-born infants. Watson accounts for some supposed case of this disorder, in the following manner: “The icterus neonatorum occurs, they say, a few days after birth; is not attended with suffering or obvious disturbance of the bodily functions; and soon disappears. Now there seems reason to believe that this is not icterus at all; and has no relation to the biliary organs. The surface of the infant at its birth, is frequently of a deep red, from hyperaemia, or congestion of blood; presenting a condition which falls little short of a mild but universal bruise. By degrees the redness fades, as bruises fade, through shades of yellow into the genuine flesh color. Such, I am assured by those who are more conversant with these matters than myself, is the pathology of the icterus infantum.
Treatment. If any thing should be required, which is not always the case, a single dose of Aconite will in the majority of cases set all right. Should the case prove a true jaundice, and be complicated with constipation or other morbid symptoms, the remedies appended to this section should be attentively studied. Cases sometimes occur in which, form the unhealthy nature of the mother’s milk, it proves so poisonous as to derange the liver of the babe, as well as its stomach and bowels. When the mother is seriously ill, and always when her milk is so plainly seen to disagree, the child should immediately be taken form the breast, and either committed to another nurse, or brought up by hand upon such diet as has previously been recommended in this work. Fatal consequences to the child may result from even a single day’s delay in following this advice. But these directions are often disregarded, when the mother is very feverish and either threatened with puerperal fever, or actually attacked by it; and the nurse persistently applies the babe to the breasts, “to prevent inflammation in them. The child is thus sacrificed, without benefiting the mother.
Aconite. The infant is hot, restless, sleepless, and in distress.
Arsenicum. Undigested, light-colored, offensive stools; dry scaldhead; yellow skin.
Bryonia. Vomiting of food soon after taking it; the child wished to keep perfectly still. Skin yellow
Calcarea c. Yellowness of the skin; the other symptoms similar to those out down for this medicine under Dentition, which see
Chamomilla. A cold seems to have been the cause of the difficulty; light-colored and offensive stools; the child is very fretful; wishes to be carries.
China. There is tenderness in the region of the liver; distention of the abdomen. Undigested and painless stools in large quantity.
Colocynth. Much colic, with writhing, twisting and doubling up..
Digitalis. The stools are almost white; scanty brown urine; frequent and empty retching; much debility.
Dulcamara. The child gets worse at every cool change of the weather.
Hepar. In children with dry, pimply eruptions.
Ignatia. The child is quite spasmodic, as a prominent symptom; frequent sighing.
Ipecacuanha.. Almost constant nausea.
Mercurius sol. General mercurial symptoms, such as salivation, swelling of the glands, slimy stools, abundant and strong- smelling urine.
Nitric acid. Urine scanty and strong-smelling; very restless after twelve o’clock at night.
Nux v. Constipation; sleeping towards morning; colic; the nurse is a high-liver, ore takes much coffee.
Pulsatilla. Entire los of appetite; vomiting of mucus; no thirst; very changeable in its appearance; worse towards evening.
Sulphur. The child wakens often; it inclines to intertrigo; and to papular eruptions more or less over the face and skin generally.
VARIOUS CUTANEOUS DISEASES.
Acne punctata, Comedones, (Maggot pimples). These appear in consequence of obstruction and enlargement of sebaceous follicles on the hose, chin or forehead. The following remedies may be studied in such cases.
Eugenia jumbos; Bryonia; Calcarea c., Natrum m.; Graphites; Sabina; Sulphur; and Thuya..
Syphilis of New-born Infants.
Aurum. If the nasal or palate bones are affected. Ozaena s.
China or phosph. acid. When the child appears very weak; and has great coldness of the skin.
Hepar. This remedy will be found useful when the mother has been allopathically treated with poisonous doses of Mercury.
Mercurius. When chancrous ulcers appear about the child.
Nitric acid. When the child has aphthae, or ptyalism.
Syphilitic Ophthalmia. In this affection may be indicated, Mercurius; Thuya; Nitric acid; and Carbo veget. Study also remedies under Inflammation of thee Eyes.
Syphilitic Cutaneous Affections. These various forms of eruptive disease require, according to their accompanying symptoms and conditions, Nitric acid; Hepar; Thuya; Phosph. avid; and Dulcamara.
Condylomata- Figwarts. In their severer form these sycotic excrescences present a red surface, and hard base; and discharge an acrid, purulent, contagious matter..
Mercurius sol. When there are general mercurial symptoms.
Nitric acid. This remedy may be indicated in some cases, where there is evidence of mercurial influence in the constitution.
Thuya. Indicated in a majority of the cases.
DISEASES OF CHILDREN concluded SCROFULA.
SCROFULA is a general name for various forms of disease arising in children of a psoric constitution. In the previous chapters we have seen how persons of strumous, or scrofulous, or psoric constitution are peculiarly liable to suffer severely from the different disorder incident in infancy and childhood; how children of this class suffer far more than others in dentition and in all the accompanying disorders of the gastro-intestinal system, in those which affect in various ways the respiratory mucous membrane and adjacent organs, and finally in the eruptive fevers of all kinds. Many of the forms of cutaneous disease, to which we have referred, are but manifestations of the same psoric element in the the system; and such are properly as well as popularly termed Scrofulous humor.
