Among the evils which spring from adenoids are deafness, a deformed jaw, restlessness, general debility, loss of appetite, defective speech, persistent colds, and arrested mental development. Frequently children pronounced defective in the public schools are found to be suffering with adenoids. When the adenoids are removed the child slowly but surely makes progress in his studies.
The mother who finds her baby breathing through the mouth should have his throat examined immediately. Even the small nursing baby that seems to choke and sputter when nursing may be suffering from this dangerous growth. The only cure for adenoids is their complete removal. This can be done any time after the baby passes its third month.
Next to adenoids as a menace to the baby’s health come enlarged tonsils. We all know how certain children are subject to sore throats, with high temperature, followed by extreme lassitude and debility. This is tonsilitis, caused in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred by enlarged tonsils. These can be operated on without any danger to the small patient, with little pain, and at comparatively small cost. Enlarged tonsils form a fine lodging-place for germs, especially those of diphtheria.
In considering cold of any sort, bear in mind that the baby cannot tell you where he feels pain. Irregular and unnatural breathing, coughs of all kinds, together with fever, should give the inexperienced mother reason for quick action. She should lose no time in sending for a physician. I recall, when one of my children was wheezing and coughing sharply, that I supposed it was an incipient case of croup. I undertook to treat it as I had treated cases of croup in my other children; but without results. I sent for the family physician, only to learn that my baby was in an advanced stage of capillary bronchitis. His life was saved only by prompt action and the faithful attendance of our family doctor.
Pneumonia may develop just as suddenly in a child, and it is therefore advisable to have the physician make a stethoscopic examination of the little patient.
Croup will be treated as a nursery emergency in Chapter [XIV].
A baby can be made ill and fretful by skin eruptions. The most common of these is prickly heat, which looks like small red pimples and blisters. These seem to be crowded together, but, nevertheless, each remains separate. The baby suffers from severe itching and a tingling or burning sensation.
At many contests I have heard mothers resent the fact that their babies were penalized or marked down for prickly heat.
“Why,” the mother would exclaim, “all babies have prickly heat!”
All babies should not have prickly heat. It is a proof that the mother is not as careful of her baby as she should be. It is due to clothing that is too heavy, too hot, or too rough; anything that will overheat the tender skin. Remove the cause of trouble. Dress the baby lightly and loosely, and give him bicarbonate of soda baths—allowing a tablespoonful of ordinary baking soda, not washing soda, to a gallon of water. Pat the skin dry, and powder the little body freely with talcum powder and boric acid mixed—allow two teaspoonfuls of the boric acid to one ounce of powder. You can get the talcum powder in one-ounce boxes, or can have it measured by your druggist.