54 DISEASES OF CHILDREN. 



owe their susceptibility to cold to sleeping in stuffy rooms. The occurrence of 

 diarrhoea, cough, great hoarseness, or other untoward symptom, should be a signal 

 for professional advice, for it must be borne in mind that many severe illnesses of 

 children " begin with a cold." The best preventives for colds are fresh air, exercise, 

 warm flannel clothing, and well-ventilated rooms. The practice of cold bathing is 

 also highly advantageous, but it is on no account to be pushed too far. The bath 

 must generally " have the chill off," and it should always be given before the fire. If 

 the child fail to get its "reaction" and warm glow after it, it should be discontinued. 

 A child who is liable to cold often requires tonics, and cod-liver oil and steel wine, 

 those never-failing friends of sickly children, should be administered. 



Spinal Disease. This is one of the occasional ailments of childhood against which 

 every parent should be on his guard. When attacked, the child attempts by every 

 means in its power to save the spine from the weight of the head. It walks slowly 

 and with fear, and seeks all the aid it can get from furniture, <tc., and may be seen 

 creeping from one part of a room to another, clinging to the rim of a table, or 

 nervously shifting from one chair to the next. There is often pain in the stomach and 

 a catching of the respiration, and this, if combined with any tenderness of the spine 

 or any prominence of the bones, should at once arouse suspicion, and cause the calling 

 of professional advice. Spinal disease occurs chiefly in sickly children of a tuberculous 

 or scrofulous constitution. It ends, if not properly attended to, in ulceration of the 

 bones of the spine, hopeless deformity, exhausting abscesses, and death. It is one of 

 those diseases which is entirely beyond the range of domestic medicine, and we 

 merely mention it that those who have the care of children may have a knowledge 

 of its existence. It is sometimes caused by accident, such as a fall or blow, but 

 depends usually more upon constitutional than accidental conditions. The only 

 treatment is to call in a surgeon, and if one be not readily accessible, to keep the 

 child in bed until the necessary advice is forthcoming. 



Hip Disease is a disease of early childhood to which the scrofulous and the sickly 

 are peculiarly liable. It is very necessary to be on one's guard against it. The 

 child limps and goes tenderly on one leg. The leg of which the hip-joint is diseased 

 has usually the thigh slightly bent forward, the knee bent a little, and the toe 

 turned inward. There is often pain in the hip, but quite as often or more often, 

 perhaps, the child complains of pain in the knee, and it is very important to 

 remember that pain in tlie knee may be the most prominent sign of commencing 

 disease of the hip. In the early stages the disease can be successfully cured, but if 

 allowed to go without treatment, it ends in destruction of the hip-joint, abscesses 

 which may burrow both internally and around the joint, and the death of the child 

 after a painful and lingering illness. The treatment of this disease is beyond the 

 scope of non-professional persons. The advice of a surgeon (not a spinal or bone 

 specialist, nor an orthopaedic blacksmith) should be sought, and the case be left 

 entirely to his skilled treatment. 



Stammering. There is nothing more likely to interfere with the worldly 

 advancement of a child than stammering, and consequently no effort should be 

 spared to check it directly a child shows any tendency towards unsteady utterance. 



