If fever develops and the child does not throw off the cold a physician should be summoned.
If the throat is sore no time should be lost in sending for a physician, for the mother cannot tell the difference between tonsilitis and diphtheria. If the doctor announces the trouble diphtheria, insist on antitoxin immediately. This wonderful remedy has passed the experimental stage: it is saving thousands of lives every year.
A sharp, dry cough, wheezing or purring in the chest, is also a dangerous symptom, and may mean bronchitis. Send for a physician at once; and, until the doctor arrives, the child should be kept in bed, the room should be warm, the temperature moist. If a considerable time must pass before the doctor will arrive it is safe to apply a mustard plaster across the bronchial tubes.
Be very careful in mixing this plaster, because the child’s skin is very tender and easily burned. Mix one part of English mustard with five or six parts of flour, and sufficient warm water to make a thin paste. Have ready a piece of old muslin or linen cut square and twice as large as the chest of the child; spread the mustard paste in the center and fold up the four corners so as to close tightly; rub the baby’s chest lightly with sweet-oil or melted vaseline to prevent blistering; lay the mustard plaster on the chest and cover it with a piece of flannel, which should be wound around the child like a bandage. Lift the corner of the plaster, from time to time, to make sure that it is not burning the flesh. In ten or fifteen minutes the skin will be slightly reddened, then remove the plaster; pat the skin dry with old linen; and cover the little patient carefully.
The old-fashioned remedy of equal parts of camphorated oil and spirits of turpentine may be applied with a warm hand, and the chest carefully covered with soft flannel, or silk and wool. Great care must be taken that the chest is not bared after these remedies have been applied, for they make the little patient more prone to chill.
If the cough is troublesome, until the arrival of the doctor, give him doses of liquid peptonoids with creosote every two hours, as follows:
| Dose for a child under 3 months, ½ teaspoonful. | |||
| From 3 to | 6 months, | 1 | teaspoonful. |
| From 6 to | 9 months, | 1½ | teaspoonfuls. |
| From 9 to | 12 months, | 2 | teaspoonfuls. |
If the attack is light it may be broken up before the doctor arrives; but it is never safe for the mother to treat symptoms of bronchitis without the advice of a physician as soon as he can be secured.
When a child shows a tendency to take cold at almost regular intervals, and the mother feels sure that this is not due to the temperature of the nursery, ill-chosen clothes or general anemia, she may well suspect adenoids. For many generations the baby who had “snuffles” and breathed with his mouth open quite generally developed an ugly case of chronic catarrh, which clung to him for life. To-day catarrh is rapidly disappearing, because it has been traced to adenoids, which can be removed.
Adenoids are a grapelike formation of tissue which grows back of the palate in the passage leading from the nose to the throat. The air must pass through this passageway when the mouth is closed. If the passageway is filled with the adenoid growth there can be no breathing through the nose, and the mouth remains open, waking and sleeping.