EARLY TREATMENT OF INFANTILE DISEASES.
Very few of the symptoms heretofore mentioned can be neglected with impunity. While some cases of sickness may be left to the powers of nature to restore health, others require judicious early treatment, and a physician should be called. We should generally enjoin rest, but we should act by our medicines to meet every positive indication.
We are the assistants of nature; we must act by removing the causes where they can be reached; we must relieve pain, but we must not by officious kindness do too much and interfere with the natural return to health. Remember that drugs are not all powerful, that time, rest, diet and numberless little things are the means by which we aid in the fight against disease.
It is an excellent plan not to continue medicine too long. Place the child on the road to health and see if it will not with a little supervision improve—still, however, using proper rest, diet, &c.
But as the apparently trifling symptoms of to-day may become the full fledged attack of to-morrow, we must pay attention to every untoward symptom. Parents are liable to be unnecessarily scared, and afterwards go to the other extreme and neglect calling a physician until serious injury has occurred.
I will here give you a few aphorism and general rules: Treatment of the sick should be according to the patient as well as according to the disease. Adult males are not so sensitive as females; young children, whether male or female, are sensitive, tender and excitable, and alive to every irritation. But young children differ in their constitution, and some have peculiarities or idiosyncracies so that medicines of ordinary activity act very powerfully or even violently.
Small children are always sensitive to the action of medicine, and small doses only are required for them. And in consequence of the activity of the vital powers, and the quickness and force of the circulation, there is a remarkable susceptibility to inflammatory action, disease sometimes running on rapidly to organic and incurable mischief.
In treating children employ the mildest remedies at first, and aid their action by regimen. When an emergency demands, use those articles which experience has shown to have power to meet such an emergency. Exhibit such medicine in the minimum dose and increase or repeat until the desired effect is produced. Be very careful not to fill the child with nostrums for some imaginary ill, lest you thereby make it ill. Always remember that the first step in treatment is to change the conditions which produced the disease—remove the cause and assist nature to repair the injury.
CHAPTER IV.
TREATMENT OF INFLAMMATION IN ITS INCIPIENT STAGES.
Usually the nurse or the mother does not treat disease, or administer medicine except under the direction of a physician, and it is not always necessary for her to know the principles that guide in their administration, or why particular medicines are given. But it is sometimes necessary for the nurse or mother to decide what shall be done, and to act before the doctor can be consulted. Accidents and emergencies occur, distress and sickness may suddenly attack some member of a family at any time, and little ailments are complained of every day by some of them; the question arises, what shall be done?