Senna. The child cries terribly, and seems full of incarcerated flatus; it even turns blue all over during its caries. Sometimes it has frequent and bloody stools.
Silicea. Colic with difficult stools; they slip back into the rectum when nearly evacuated.
Stannum. The child’s colic is relieved by pressing firmly upon its abdomen. When it is crying with colic, relief at once obtained by carrying it with its abdomen resting upon the point of the nurse’s shoulder.
Staphysagria. The child seems to be suffering from a fit of charging, or indisposition of the nurse. Indicated in the sufferings of pot-bellied children, with much colic and humid scald-head.
Sulphur. The child has a tendency to excoriations, wherever the skin is folded upon itself. Pimply eruptions filled with pus. Redness about the anus after an evacuation. This remedy very often cures the colic and derangement of the stomach of infants.
Veratrum. Terrible colic with coldness of the forehead. Very cold feet with the colic. The sufferings cause a cold sweat to stand upon the surface, particularly upon the forehead.
DENTITION.
The development of the teeth in their regular order, although a perfectly natural process, is often attended with much suffering. And when the dentition of young infants is slow, retarded and difficult, it not only becomes of itself a serious disorders, but it involves, also a long train of morbid symptoms and actual diseases, which may exhaust the patient’s strength and finally destroy its life. The primary difficulty in such cases is in the nutrition; and as we often see in older children a remarkable backwardness in the development of the osseous system in general, so we often find in earlier periods of infantile life a corresponding slowness in the development of the teeth. And both these forms of imperfect development, occurring, as they often do, successively in the same children, are to be attributed to some profound constitutional dyscrasia which affects the nutrition.
Even when the teeth are grown and cut through in the easiest and most natural manner, there is usually some constitutional excitement, which may variously manifest itself, in the form of fretfulness, worrying, restlessness, inflammation of the gums, heat about the head, and more or less general fever. Where the dentition is difficult and retarded, there is prolongation of all the constitutional disturbance; great aggravation of the symptoms already mentioned; and the addition to them of others still more severe, such as vomiting and diarrhoea. The still increasing debility of the system resulting from the nervous exhaustion inseparable from so much suffering, and from such derangement of the digestive function, cannot but augment the original constitutional lesion of nutrition. And unless the mischief is arrested by suitable medication, the patient may sink from inanition; from colliquative diarrhoea; from hydrocephaloid, or from convulsions. And perhaps in no other morbid condition of the human system is the Homoeopathic practice more evidently superior than in this, where the medicines may relieve much of the nervous suffering and prevent the injurious effects ordinarily resulting from disorders of the digestive effects ordinarily resulting from disorders of the digestive apparatus, at the same time that they promote the growth and development of the teeth, by remedying the primary and constitutional lesions of nutrition.
In order that the physician may judge of the degree of deviation from the normal standard of dentition in any given instance, we proceed to state here the mode and order of the appearance of the teeth in health. But first it should be observed that there are anomalous cases in dentition; but as was previously observed with regard to the non-appearance of the menses in young women at the usual time, delay in the appearance of the teeth should not be regarded as requiring active interference, unless other, morbid, symptoms were also present. The non-appearance of the teeth at the usual time, unless accompanied by symptoms of constitutional disturbance, really furnishes less occasion for apprehension than their premature appearance would. Even in the condition of apparently perfect health, some infants begin to cut their teeth early, even by the third month; while in others this process commences at a very much her period.
In the early months, the infant’s mouth is naturally dry; this dryness is relieved by frequent nursing. But usually about the fourth or fifth month a very considerable change takes place in this respect’ the mouth is now found constantly full of saliva, and the child is constantly driveling, or drooling, as it is vulgarly termed, “but no other indication appears of the approach of the teeth to the surface, except that the edge of the gums becomes broader than it was before. No further change may take place for many weeks; and it is generally near the end of the seventh month, oftener later than earlier, before the first teeth make their appearance. The middle incisors of the lower jaw are generally the first to pierce the gum; next in order appear the middle incisors of the upper jaw; then the lateral incisors of the lower. The first molars next succeed, and often without any very definite order as to whether those of the upper or of the lower jaw are first visible, though in the majority of cases the lower molars are the first to appear. The four canine teeth succeed; and lastly the four posterior molars, making in all the number of twenty deciduous teeth. There are, however, intervals of rest between the successive eruptions of teeth; thus a period of six or eight weeks generally intervenes between the lower and the upper central incisors; the lower lateral incisors come very soon after. But a pause of three or four months may occur before the first molar teeth make their appearance; another of equal length may occur previous to the appearance of the canine teeth; and still another the first dentition is completed by the eruption of the last molars.
In some few cases the teeth come through so readily as scarcely to disturb the smiling serenity of the infant; but more frequently indeed the mouth becomes hot and the gums look tumid, tense and shining, while the exact position of each tooth is marked some time before its appearance by the prominence of the gum; or the eruption of the teeth is preceded or accompanied by a somewhat different condition of the mouth, in which there is much heat and intense redness of the mucous membrane, an extremely copious flow of saliva, and a disposition to the formation of small aphthous ulcerations on the tongue, at the outer surface of the alveolae, or of the duplicature of the lips, though the gums themselves may not be particularly swollen and painful. Either of these states is usually attended with some degree of febrile disturbance, and apparently with considerable suffering to the infant, who it constantly fretful and peevish, or cries out occasionally as if in pain. A third morbid condition of the mouth is sometimes seen, which is usually ushered in or attended by very considerable fever and disorder of the chylopoetic viscera. The gums then becomes extremely hot and unusually tender, especially over some tooth or other in particular, and in that situation we find the gum swollen up into a kind of little tumor. Small, unhealthy ulcerations, with a sloughy appearance often form upon the summit of the gums, and especially around any tooth which has partially pierced through it. To this affection, which is often very painful and difficult of cure, the name of odontitis infantum has been applied. West.
As if from a common centre, almost all the various disorders peculiar, to infancy and early childhood may be seen to spring from difficult dentition. Especially is this true of those lesions of nutrition already described under the head of Indigestion, Vomiting, Diarrhoea; and of some of the diseases presently to be mentioned, such as aphthae, convulsions and hydrocephalus. Thus, sooner or later, all cases of protracted dentition, requiring medical assistance, will be found complicated with some one or more of these forms of disease. In treating such cases, therefore, regard must be had to these consequences of the original disorders, as of the one grand cause of all. All these troubles are developed in a successive series; and at whatever point of the series we are called in, then we must begin and try back, as it were; and by thus carefully attending to all the successive developments, of vomiting, diarrhoea, aphthae, &c., seek to find the one remedy which shall remove the whole train of symptoms by reaching its original and primary cause in constitutional lesion of nutrition, and its secondary cause in the protracted and difficult dentition. And with these views, it will be seen to be requisite to consult land compare the remedies advised under diarrhoea where that condition obtains, and those mentioned under vomiting, aphthae, &c., where these conditions appear; as well as those more especially recommended at the close of this article.
