Attention is especially necessary to be directed to the urinary organs of children of both sexes, as serious disease sometimes occurs in those parts.
Great watchfulness is necessary to allay excessive irritation. Whenever the skin becomes hot or irritable, much relief will be afforded by sponging it with warm water to which, a few drops of Carbolic Acid have been added, and drying with a soft towel. When the pustules burst, powdered starch or corn-flour should be freely applied to absorb the matter. Cleanliness and frequent washing with tepid water are imperatively necessary, especially during the last stage of the disease. If the eyelids are glued together, they should be sponged frequently with warm water.
DISINFECTION. All infected clothing, and bedding should be burned; or, in default of this, baked or boiled for half an hour at a temperature of 212*. Rooms should be fumigated with burning Sulphur, the walls cleansed and divested of their paper, the floors scrubbed and washed with a solution of chloride of zinc, and walls and ceiling lime-washed; afterwards the doors and windows kept open for several days.
PREVENTIVES DURING AN EPIDEMIC. Vaccination; tincture of Sulphur (once of twice daily); and fresh air. Too much importance cannot be attached to the dilution and dispersion of the Small-pox poison by free ventilation; this operates as a preventive, and improves the condition of patients suffering from the disease. The spread of Small-pox is just in proportion to the overcrowded and insanitary condition of the places in which the disease occurs.
XIV. Vaccination. Cow-pox.
This disease is similar to Small-pox; and when artificially introduced into the human system is as possible protective against Small-pox.
Since its general use, it has probably saved more lives ( to say nothing of disfigurement, loss of sight, etc.) than all other remedies put together. It has fallen into disrepute in some quarters on account of the troublesome affections that have occasionally followed. These, however, bear but a small proportion to the number of cases in which no secondary effects appeared, and are not to be mentioned in comparison with the loathsomeness and fatality of Small-pox.
Vaccination should be performed not later than the third month of infancy, before teething disturbs the system. If a child suffers from any disease which renders vaccination undesirable, a medical certificate is necessary to postpone the operation.
SYMPTOMS. When the operation is successful, a slight rosy elevation may be felt on the second day, and a small red pimple appears on the fourth of fifth day. The next day this becomes a pustule, which increases in size to about a quarter of an inch in diameter.
The lymph in it is at first ( on the eighth day) clear, and of a pearl colour; then milky; next yellow; and finally dries into a reddish brown scab. About the twenty-first day the scab falls off, leaving a permanent scar.
The constitutional disturbance is usually not great. Should there be much local redness and swelling, a few doses of Aconite or Belladonna will relieve the patient. The latter remedy is curative of erysipelatous complications. Care should be taken to protect the arms from friction, that the sores may not be irritated, and the scabs not torn off. Occasionally a poultice is necessary if inflammation or suppuration is excessive; or the application of fine-powdered starch or corn-flour. About the eighth day, a dose of Sulphur, morning and night, for a few days, may prevent affections that sometimes follow Vaccination.
RE-VACCINATION. After a number of years the virtue of Vaccination is weakened, and on arrival at puberty the process should be repeated. By some it is recommended that adults should be re-vaccinated once every ten years; well-recorded statistics show that well-vaccinated persons are almost entirely secure against infection.
XV. Chicken-pox.
This is an eruption almost peculiar to the young, and spreads by contagion.
SYMPTOMS. Slight fever; eruption of pimples on the second day, which becomes vesicles, and sometimes pustules, and dry up in three or four days.
The eruption comes out in successive crops, so that while some vesicles are disappearing others may be forming.
It differs from Small-pox in the slighter fever which attends it; in the earlier appearance of the eruption; in the absence of an inflammatory ring round the spots in the first stage; in the vesicular character of the eruption, etc.
REMEDIES. If the fever be considerable, Aconitum every four or six hours. Generally Rhus Tox. is the best remedy, under the action of which the disease soon disappears Belladonna. For headache and disturbance of the brain. Excessive itching. Mercurius Suppuration. Ant.-T. When the vesicles fill with matter, or convulsions set in.
ACCESSORIES. Milk-diet is best. Exposure to cold should be avoided, especially in cold weather, but the room should be kept well ventilated. The child should be prevented from scratching the skin when the scales are formed.
XVI. Simple Fever (Febricula).
This is a feverish attack, which generally disappears in from twelve to thirty-six hours.
SYMPTOMS. Alternate chills or flushes, followed by heat and dryness of the skin; hard, full, quick pulse; dry, coated tongue; thirst; hurried, anxious breathing; highly-coloured, scanty urine. Also, often, pains in the loins, headache, deranged bowels, and loss of appetite. As these symptoms may be harbingers of serious diseases, they require prompt attention. Constant sighing indicates the approach of some eruption.
CAUSES. Suppressed, perspiration, exposure to damp or cold, sudden changes of temperature, wearing damp clothes; poor or insufficient diet; injuries, internal or external; fatigue, etc.; or it may be modified variety of more serious fever.
REMEDIES. Aconitum is the chief remedy for all simple febrile symptoms. A dose every two or three hours, or, in urgent cases, every half-hour, till perspiration, the sign of its beneficial action, breaks out.
Camphor. Sudden seizure of chilliness; shivering, with lassitude, and general indisposition which has come on rapidly. A dose repeated three times, at intervals of fifteen or twenty minutes, may precede Aconite, or it may be alone sufficient.
Belladonna. Headache, flush, congestion, wakefulness, dread of light and noise.
Bryonia. Cough, oppressed breathing, pains in the limbs, gastric disturbance.
Arsenicum. Prolonged cases; prostration; weak patients.
If the fever does not quickly yield, a homoeopathic practitioner should be called in, as it may be initiatory of a more serious disease.
ACCESSORIES. Quiet, repose in bed. Light bed-coverings. The hot foot-bath or the wet-pack. Water should be the principle beverage in small draughts.
As the fever declined, milk-diet should precede more substantial food.
XVII. Enteric Fever. Typhoid Fever. Infantile Remittent Fever.
In children, Enteric Fever is called Infantile Remittent Fever. Its chief effects are concentrated on the portions of the bowels (entrails ) called the solitary glands and Peyer’s patches, which become inflamed and ulcerated.
CAUSES. Exciting. Impure milk, or drinking-water which contains decomposing organic matters. Impure air containing the gases given off by decomposing organic matters.
Predisposing. Youth. Although Enteric Fever may occur at any period up to about the forty-fifth year, it shows a marked preference for young subjects, especially boys, though it seldom occurs before the fifth year. Children are very liable to it, especially from the fifth to the ninth year of life. The season, The disease is always most widely diffused in the autumn and in the first setting-in of the cold weather. The atmosphere A long continuance of hot, dry, summer weather generally promotes the occurrence of the disease. There is little risk from contagion.
SYMPTOMS. The early symptoms are languor, poor appetite, diarrhoea, pain in the head, sleeplessness, dull wandering mind, especially at night; thirst, and a dry, red, or cracked tongue. The pulse is quick and feeble, the skin hot, and a bright flush appears on the cheek. Enlargement of the abdomen takes place, with tenderness on the right side, below the level of the navel, and a gurgling feeling produced there on pressure. The diarrhoeic discharges are of a light ochre colour, copious and liquid.
The eruption appears about the seventh day, consisting of a few rose-coloured dots, which fade away for a moment on pressure, and appear chiefly on the back and extremities.
The temperature rises gradually in the evening, being about 2* higher than in the morning. A considerable difference between the morning and evening temperature (that in the morning being the lowest) is favourable. A persistent temperature of 104*, or an elevation of the morning over the evening temperature, is unfavourable.
Mild cases are over in twenty-one days, but severe ones may last four or five weeks, or even longer.
DANGERS. The great danger is from perforation, consequent upon ulceration of the bowels, which destroy many patients when recovery seems to be setting in. Haemorrhage, severe diarrhoea, and lung complications are dangerous. The disease often calls into activity the slumbering germs of Consumption.
LICENTIATE OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS; MEMBER OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS; LICENTIATE IN MIDWIFERY, LONDON AND EDINBURGH, ETC. PHYSICIAN TO THE READING AND BERKSHIRE HOMOEOPATHIC DISPENSARY.
Author of "The Stepping Stone to Homeopathy and Health,"
"Manual of Homoeopathic Treatment". Editor of "The Homoeopathic World."