[11] Reports of the Registrar-General, as quoted at p. 30 of my Lectures on Diseases of Children. The actual numbers are 9,350 under five years old, out of a total of 16,258.
[12] Figures deduced from the 44th Report of the Registrar-General.
[13] Before I called attention to this form of headache in the last edition of my lectures, it had already been noticed without my knowledge, by a friend of mine, Dr. Blache, of Paris, in a very valuable essay on the headaches which occur during the period of growth.
CHAPTER VII.
THE DISORDERS AND DISEASES OF THE CHEST.
In speaking of the ailments which occur during the first month after birth, I have already noticed the peculiarities of breathing in early infancy, and the difficulties that sometimes attend the complete filling of the air-cells of the lungs, and the readiness with which when once filled they become emptied of air and collapse.
On this ground it is therefore needless for me again to enter, and I may pass at once to consider those ailments which rise in increasing importance from a simple cold or catarrh to inflammation of the air-tubes or bronchitis, inflammation of the lung substance, as pneumonia, and inflammation of the membrane which lines the chest and covers the lungs, or pleurisy.
Catarrh.—A common cold or catarrh is not one of the ailments of very early infancy. The watery eyes, the sneezing, the cough, the slight feverishness and the heavy head are scarcely met with until after the age of three months; nor, indeed, are they often seen till the child is old enough to run about, to go out for a walk, and to encounter in consequence all the variations of temperature and of damp or dryness inseparable from the English climate.