Demulcent washes of elm, sassafras-pith, or flaxseed are often more soothing than simple water. Pellets of ice from time to time are quite refreshing and agreeable. Occasional topical use of borax or alum, applied several times a day by means of a hair pencil, soft cotton wad, or the like, is often useful, care being taken to touch the sores lightly, and not to rub them. If the course toward repair is retarded, the parts may be touched lightly with silver nitrate in stick or in strong solution (60 grains), or washed more freely, two or three times a day, with a weaker solution, five or ten grains to the ounce of distilled water. Cupric sulphate, ten grains to the ounce, zinc sulphate, twenty grains to the ounce, mercuric chloride, one grain to the ounce, or potassium chlorate, twenty grains to the ounce, may be used as local applications, repeated at intervals of four or five hours. Iodoform has been highly recommended of late.
The confluent variety requires constitutional treatment adapted to the underlying malady. Nutritious diet is often demanded, together with tonics, such as iron and quinia, or even stimulants, wine or brandy. Topically, cauterization with silver nitrate is more apt to be indicated, and to be indicated more promptly than in the discrete form. Potassium chlorate in doses of one or more grains may often be given with advantage, at intervals of from four to two hours.
Stomatitis Parasitica.
DEFINITION.—An exudative inflammation of the interior of the mouth, due to the development upon the mucous membrane of a parasitic vegetable confervoid growth, the Oïdium albicans (Robin).
SYNONYMS.—Stomatitis cremosa; Stomatitis pseudo-membranosa; Thrush; Muguet of the French; Schwämmchen of the Germans.
HISTORY.—Thrush was long regarded as a pseudo-membranous variety of stomatitis, and was likewise confounded with other varieties of stomatitis, especially aphthæ, its differentiation from which will be rendered apparent by a study of its etiology and morbid anatomy.
The microscopic researches of Berg4 of Stockholm upon the minute structure of the supposed pseudo-membrane developed the fact that it was largely composed of certain cryptogams. This growth was named Oïdium albicans by Prof. Ch. Robin,5 by whom it had been subjected to minute study.
4 Ueber die Schwämmchen bei Kindern, 1842—Van der Busch's translation from the Swedish, Bremen, 1848.
5 Histoire naturelle des Végétaux parasites, Paris, 1853.
Later observers consider the oïdia in general simply transitional forms in the life-history of fungi otherwise classified. According to Grawitz, the O. albicans is a stage of the Mycoderma vini, his experiments having shown that on cultivation the filaments germinate like Torula and Mycoderma, and that the latter can be grown in the epithelium of the mucous membrane.6