Aconitum.- In the early stage, especially if there be any febrile symptoms, swelling and redness of the lining membrane of the nostrils.
Arsenicum.- Watery, excoriating discharge.
Camphor.- Only useful in the chilly stage.
Dulcamara.- When brought on by damp.
Euphrasia.- With copious watery discharge form the eyes.
Mercurius Sol.6.- In the profuse “running cold”, as also in cases which the discharge is semi-purulent, this medicine is most efficacious.
Nux Vomica is the established remedy for the “stuffy cold”.
ACCESSORY TREATMENT.- The child should remain in a room the atmosphere of which is of a comfortable, uniform temperature. A warm bath should be given on going to bed, and the child well wrapped in an extra blanket, so as to favour the free action of the skin; this is still further promoted by drinking freely of cold water during and after the bath. In the case of infants their noses should be frequently smeared with simple cerate, cold-cream, or tallow, to prevent the discharge from forming into hard crusts. In chronic obstinate cases the interior of the nostrils may be syringed with a weak solution of Carbolic Acid. If suckling be difficult or impossible, the milk should be drawn, and the infant fed with it by means of a spoon till the compliant be modified.
PREVENTION.- Except before the third month, and for decidedly delicate children, rapid cold bathing of the whole body is a grand method of preventing children from being chilled by exposure to cold air, which is otherwise beneficial. For delicate children, tepid may be used at first, and gradually reduced to cold, and the bathing done very quickly. They should also be exposed to the open air daily, which tends to strengthen the body to resist atmospheric changes. Children should be properly clothed, infants should be taught to use the nostrils for breathing in sleep instead of the mouth. This cannot be done too early, for the habit is difficult of acquirement if neglected till adult life.
50. Acute Bronchitis.
DEFINITION.- acute inflammation of the mucous lining of the bronchi – the air-tubes of the lungs. It is a diffused disease, involving more or less the smaller tubes of both lungs, thus differing from cold or catarrh, which only affects the lining membrane of the nose, throat, and eyes. When the upper portion of the chest is chiefly affected, patients often describe it as a “Cold in the chest”.
Bronchitis is one of the most important diseases of early childhood, on account of its frequency, its liability to complication with Pneumonia, and the danger from suffocation which the accumulated mucus involves.
CAUSES.- Exposure to cold draughts of air, to keen and cutting winds, or sudden changes of temperature; insufficient clothing; inhalations of dust, smoke, or other irritative substances. Bronchitis also arises during the course of other diseases – Measles, Whooping-cough, etc. – especially in weakened children. It is a common complication of Rickets.
SYMPTOMS.- Bronchitis usually begins with the symptoms of a common cold – feverishness, Headache, lassitude, cough, etc. These are soon attended with a feeling of tightness or constriction in the chest, especially the front portion; the breathing becomes oppressed and hurried, with wheezing or whistling sounds; there is severe cough, which is at first dry, but is afterwards attended with viscid and frothy expectoration, subsequently becoming thick, yellowish, and purulent. The pulse is frequent, often weak; the urine scanty and high-coloured; the tongue foul; there are throbbing pains in the forehead, and aching pains in the eyes, aggravated by the cough, with other symptoms of fever. Nursing children suck with difficulty, or do so eagerly for a short time, and then desist from interrupted breathing, throw the head back, and commence coughing or crying.
The unfavourable symptoms are – cold perspirations covering the skin; pale and livid cheeks and lips; cold extremities; rapid respirations; the nostrils being widely dilated at each breath; drowsiness; extreme prostration; rattling, and a sense of suffocation in the throat; and complete insensibility, ending in death. Convulsions towards the end of an attack generally indicate collapse of the lung, and impending death. In favourable cases, the disease begins to decline between the fourth and eighth day, and under good treatment soon disappears.
TREATMENT.- At the commencement of the disease Aconitum given at once, and repeated every hour or two hours, may arrest the attack in a very short time; but should it fail to do so, or the disease have advanced considerably before attention has been called to it, either Antim tart. or Kali Bichrom. will have to be administered alone, or, if there be fever symptoms, alternately with Aconitum, at intervals of two hours or so.
INDICATIONS FOR THE ABOVE AND OTHER REMEDIES.
Aconitum.- A short, hard cough, tickling of the pit of the windpipe and chest, burning and soreness of the chest on coughing, frontal headache, febrile symptoms.
Antimonium Tart.- Wheezing in chest; paroxysms of suffocative cough, with copious loose expectoration, sickness being often induced by the accumulation of mucus; dyspnoea, palpitation, and headache.
Bryonia.- Especially valuable when rheumatic pains in the muscles were present before, or are present during, the attack.
Kali bichromicum- When the expectoration is very stringy and tenacious.
Phosphorus- May be required if the inflammation extends to the substance of the lungs.
ACCESSORY MEASURES.- The patient should be kept in a warm atmosphere (65o to 75o), in a tent, with a bronchitis kettle, and encouraged to drink freely of hot liquids, especially hot lemonade. Ventilation of the room should not be neglected. Hot linseed-meal poultices applied to the back, not to the chest, are beneficial.
DIET.- During an attack, gum-water, barley-gruel, beef-tea, jelly, etc. In feeble children, exhaustion is liable to come on, requiring nutritious support. During convalescence, undue exposures must be guarded against until the constitution has been strengthened and injured by warm bathing, gradually reduced to cold as the reactive power of the child permits.
51. Inflammation of the Lungs (Pneumonia).
DEFINITION.- an acute inflammation of the lung tissue, accompanied by high temperature and very rapid respiration.
VARIETIES.- Pneumonia is either primary (in which case it is generally lobar, i.e. it involves the whole of a lobe or more than one lobe) or secondary (“consecutive” to Measles, Diphtheria, Whooping-cough, etc. – in which case it is generally lobular and occurs in patches in the lung, developing upon a bronchitis and hence commonly called Broncho-Pneumonia). Lobar Pneumonia is most frequent in children between one and two, and it is a far less serious compliant than Broncho-Pneumonia, which often attacks infants.
SYMPTOMS.- The onset of Lobar Pneumonia is usually abrupt, with shivering and a sharp rise of temperature. Often there is vomiting to begin with, or even Convulsions. “A deceptive onset of Pneumonia is with drowsiness” (Hutchison). Respiration is rapid out of proportion to the rapidity of the pulse, and expiration is apt to be grunting and accompanied by an expansion of the aloe nasi. There is a frequent short, dry, painful cough and very sticky rust-coloured sputum, which, however, children under three seldom expectorate. There are often “water-blisters” on the lips (Herpes Labialis). Physical sings are often in children very indefinite at the onset of the disease, and diagnosis has to be made upon the strength of the general evidence. In favourable cases, resolution takes place by crisis on any day from the fifth to the ninth, the temperature coming down with a steep drop, together with pulse and respiration. Lobar Pneumonia is not nearly so serious in children as it is in adults – delirium and cardiac failure, for instance, are seldom seen in children.
The onset of Broncho-Pneumonia is apt to be insidious. It is usually secondary to a Bronchitis following on, or complicating, some such disease as Measles or Whooping-cough, and it is often very difficult to be sure when the Bronchitis has become a Pneumonia. Sustained high temperature, very rapid respiration and cyanosis indicate Pneumonia. The temperature is more apt to oscillate widely in Broncho-Pneumonia than in Lobar Pneumonia, and it ends by lysis, that is, by a gradual decline spread over two or three days. The chief difference between the two forms of Pneumonia is that Broncho-Pneumonia is vastly the more serious and fatal disease.
CAUSATION.- The real cause of Lobar Pneumonia is the pneumococcus; of Broncho-Pneumonia, occasionally the pneumococcus, but more often a streptococcus. The main exciting cause, apart from an antecedent disease, is chill.
TREATMENT.- If administered early, and every two hours, Aconite will often be quite sufficient to check the advance of the disease. If it fail to accomplish this, Phosph. should be given, either alone or in alternation with Aconite At intervals of about two hours. Rarely any other medicines will be required.
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."