252 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the day preceding the night on which it suddenly wakes up all at once 

 ill with alarming signs of threatening suffocation, attended with loud, 

 clamorous coughing and a clear voice. Here no false membrane is 

 present in the throat, nor are the glands about the jaw swollen. False 

 croup is generally mild, and it is not contagious. 



Dysentery may be contagious. It is distinguished by a frequent, 

 sometimes a continual, desire to seek relief in the closet, where in 

 spite even of severe straining the child succeeds in passing only a little 

 slime or mucus, often colored by small quantities of blood. General 

 indisposition and colicky pains in the belly soon compel the child with 

 dysentery to leave the school. To stop infection, no child suffering 

 with dysentery should be allowed to use the general school water or 

 other closet. Dysentery is not to be confounded with diarrhoea, where 

 there are more or less frequent liquid motions. 



Typhoid fever is infectious, and is apt to set in or to sneak in with 

 ill-defined signs. For some days the child may have lost its appetite 

 and its general energy, it is fatigued and " done up." Then the fever 

 is next ushered in with great pain, noises and confusion in the head ; 

 the hearing becomes obtuse ; giddiness occurs, with great difficulty to 

 keep any upright position. There is often bleeding from the nose 

 generally followed up by colicky pains in and swelling of the belly 

 associated with some diarrhoea. The skin is dry, parched and hot ; 

 the tongue fouled, with red tip and sides. However, the child before 

 this has been compelled by its state of indisposition to cease attend- 

 ing the school. 



Whooping-cough, is eminently contagious. The child may be noticed 

 to have had during one or more weeks occasional but violent fits of 

 coughing, which are most frequent during the night. If no complica- 

 tion be present, there is practically no cough between these spasmodic 

 attacks. Usually a short feeling of general indisposition precedes the 

 attack, during which the child in vain struggles to suppress the cough 

 about to burst, when all at once the trunk and frame are subjected to 

 a violent series of successive throbs almost threatening suffocation. At 

 this epoch a few deep drawings-in of the breath are followed by a 

 whistling and almost convulsive inspiration, which may again be suc- 

 ceeded by boisterous coughing. Then in most cases, after a brief 

 moment's repose, a second but a less severe and a shorter onslaught 

 than the first is noticed. Lastly, the fit is terminated by the child's 

 partly spitting and partly swallowing some thick mucus, often at the 

 same time vomiting up any matter present in the stomach. 



The time occupied by these seizures to their termination by expec- 

 toration varies from sixteen seconds to a couple of minutes. 



Owing to the grave and fatal complications often associated even 

 with apparently mild cases of whooping-cough, most especially in very 

 young children, immediate isolation of the sufferer from its schoolfel- 

 lows is necessary. 



