Advice to a wife and mother in two parts

by Pye Henry Chavasse

To make a Mixture. A tablespoonful to be taken every four hours.

Or,

Take of—Muriated Tincture of Iron, half a drachm;

Simple Syrup, one ounce;

Water, three ounces:

To make a Mixture. A tablespoonful to be taken three times a day.

If the disease should travel downward, it will cause all the symptoms of croup, then it must be treated as croup; with this only difference, that a blister (tela vesicatoria) must not be applied, or the blistered surface may be attacked by the membrane of diphtheria, which may either cause death or hasten that catastrophe. In every other respect treat the case as croup, by giving an emetic, a teaspoonful of ipecacuanha wine every five minutes, until free vomiting be excited, and then administer smaller doses of ipecacuanha wine every two or three hours, as I recommended when conversing with you on the treatment of croup.

What Not to do.—Do not, on any account, apply either leeches or a blister. If the latter be applied, it is almost sure to be covered with the membrane of diphtheria, similar to that inside of the mouth and of the throat, which would be a serious complication. Do not give either calomel or emetic tartar. Do not depress the system by aperients, for diphtheria is an awfully depressing complaint of itself; the patient, in point of fact, is laboring under the depressing effects of poison, for the blood has been poisoned either by the drinking water being contaminated by fecal matter from either a privy or from a water-closet; by some horrid drain; by proximity to a pig-sty; by an overflowing privy, especially if vegetable matter be rotting at the same time in it; by bad ventilation, or by contagion. Diphtheria may generally be traced either to the one or to the other of the above causes; therefore let me urgently entreat you to look well into all these matters, and thus to stay the pestilence! Diphtheria might long remain in a neighborhood if active measures be not used to exterminate it.

210. Have the goodness to describe the symptoms of Measles?

Measles commences with symptoms of a common cold; the patient is at first chilly, then hot and feverish; he has a running at the nose, sneezing, watering and redness of the eyes, headache, drowsiness, a hoarse and peculiar ringing cough, which nurses call “measle-cough,” and difficulty of breathing. These symptoms usually last three days before the eruption appears; on the fourth it (the eruption) generally makes its appearance, and continues for four days and then disappears, lasting altogether, from the commencement of the symptoms of cold to the decline of the eruption, seven days. It is important to bear in mind that the eruption consists of crescent-shaped—half-moon-shaped—patches; that they usually appear first about the face and the neck, in which places they are the best marked; then on the body and on the arms; and, lastly, on the legs, and that they are slightly raised above the surface of the skin. The face is swollen, more especially the eyelids, which are sometimes for a few days closed.