302 DISEASES OF THE NASAL CAVITIES. 



membranes to the skin of the nose and cheeks. A cold in the head is 

 often complicated by a conjunctivitis. The patients avoid the light, 

 and copious tears flow from their reddened eyes into the nostrils and 

 over the cheeks. Should the fauces participate in the nasal catarrh, 

 there is difficulty of swallowing ; if the air-passages be implicated, 

 cough and hoarseness accompany the symptoms. Propagation of the 

 disease into the eustachian tube induces slight pain and roaring in the 

 ears, or a temporary hardness of hearing. 



The group of symptoms which we have just described is almost 

 always accompanied by fever and general constitutional disturbance ; 

 particularly if the catarrh have acquired great intensity or be spread 

 over a wide extent of surface. It may be slight in many persons, 

 who are but little predisposed to febrile reaction ; in others, who are 

 usually spoken of as irritable persons, it is highly oppressive. 



We have already depicted the symptoms of catarrhal fever, the 

 often-recurring chill provoked by every change of temperature, the 

 painful bruised sensation of the limbs, the loss of appetite, etc., while 

 treating of bronchial catarrh. 



The duration of acute nasal catarrh is usually short ; indeed, the 

 secretion generally becomes less profuse, and grows thicker and more 

 opaque, even on the second or third day. It then loses its salt taste ; 

 the alkaline reaction is less marked ; it takes on a yellowish or yellow- 

 ish-green tinge, and dries, especially during the night, into hard crusts, 

 which adhere firmly to the mucous membrane. The titillation in the 

 nostrils and the sneezing are less frequent, the frontal headache 

 abates, the swelling of the mucous membrane subsides, and, all liquid 

 or inspissated secretion having been discharged, the nasal passages be- 

 come free again. The febrile constitutional disturbance seldom lasts 

 .'onger than a day or two. Those symptoms, too, which appertain to 

 the spreading of the catarrh into the neighboring mucous membranes, 

 generally begin to lose their intensity or even cease entirely toward 

 the end of the first week ; and in most cases the disease terminates in 

 complete recovery on the fifth, sixth, or eighth day. It is very rarely, 

 and only in scrofulous subjects, that a cold in the head becomes pro- 

 tracted and changes from an acute into a chronic affection. 



While acute nasal catarrh is a complaint as common as it is harm- 

 less, it sometimes proves dangerous to infants at the breast, because 

 the obstruction of their nasal passages, which are at all times narrow, 

 makes it difficult for them to suck. If we do not feed with a spoon 

 in such cases, life itself may be endangered in ill-nourished or feeblo 

 children. 



In chronic nasal catarrh we do not usually find the feeling of prick- 

 liug in the nose, the sneezing and the frontal pain, and the febrile 



