From the South.—Your cheeks burn after meals because you have indigestion. If you pay attention to your digestion your trouble will soon cease. Do you masticate your food properly? and do you rest after meals? These are two of the cures of indigestion—and they are generally overlooked. You should wear a veil when you go out, for cold winds of themselves may make the cheeks burn. A veil does a great deal to temper the severity of the wind.
Little Pussy.—Your complaint is by no means uncommon. Thousands, we might almost say millions, of girls suffer from the same form of nervousness as you do. A short time back we published an article on this complaint, which deals specially with that form of nervousness from which you suffer.
Peggie.—It is very common for persons, especially children, to grind their teeth during sleep. There are many things which can account for the habit. Errors of diet are the chief of these. Late, or large suppers are very potent causes. Another cause is irritation about the face or head. The presence of bad teeth, of enlarged tonsils, or adenoids, or of anything hindering free respiration through the nose are also very apt to cause tooth grinding during sleep. The treatment for it is to breathe through your nose, or if you cannot do so now, have your nose seen to so as to enable you to breathe properly, and avoid late suppers. You should also be careful not to sleep upon your back.
A. M. O. L.—Yes; sulphur soap and sulphur ointment used as we advised “Fair Isabel” to use them in last year’s volume, page 448. Whatever you do, be very careful of the soap you use for your face.
Dilly.—You are quite right in persevering in the treatment of acne. What troubles you now is really a very simple matter. The sulphur kills the outer layer of the skin and that causes the flaking and cracking of the skin which annoys you. Now what you should do is to leave off the ointment for a fortnight or more and see how you get on. If the acne gets worse, then return to the sulphur ointment, only use it diluted with an equal quantity of lanoline or vaseline. Your face will soon get right again. Wear a veil when you go out, and apply a little glycerine and rose water (a dram of glycerine to an ounce of rose water).
Alma.—Do not let your daughter grow up with a hare-lip. This hideous deformity is readily cured by a small operation. Nothing is left of it but a small scar to mark the site of the operation. The earlier the operation is done the more excellent will be the result.
Belle.—Undoubtedly the use of tight corsets is a very fertile cause of indigestion. And, indeed, it is a potent factor of that terrible form of indigestion associated with ulceration of the stomach. Some of the greatest medical authorities aver that the reason why that most serious disease is so far more common in women than in men, is because the former wear corsets. Be this as it may, it is an absolute fact that it is quite impossible to cure indigestion if the sufferer wears tight corsets. There is no necessity to abandon corsets altogether, but you must wear them loose. And why should you not wear them loose? It is no longer fashionable to have a waist like a wasp!
Vega.—Your condition is one of the commonest which the aural surgeon is called upon to treat. You have done perfectly right and you have been well treated. You really have no cause to complain, for it is a condition which often requires years of treatment to completely cure. The giddiness, after syringing, is usually due to injecting the fluid too forcibly. What kind of syringe do you use? You must go on with the treatment. You suggest that the syringing increases the discharge, because since you have left off treatment the discharge has stopped. But you are labouring under a great fallacy. The discharge has not stopped, but it has caked in the ear and cannot find an exit. You must be very careful to guard against this, as it is a dangerous condition. There is, or rather there may be, a connection between the discharge from your right ear and the weakness in your right eye. Without a knowledge of anatomy and medicine you could not appreciate this connection if we were to describe it. Suffice it to say that the connection is through the nose. Both the ear and the eye have tubes ending in the nose.
S. G.—We really cannot give you much advice without further information. You say you have had “inflammation.” Where? When? And of what kind? More than three-quarters of the diseases of man are due to inflammation. What we believe is the matter with you is anæmia and debility. And the treatment we advise is plenty of good food and outdoor exercise, or as much of these two as you can get. A short course of a mild preparation of iron would probably do you good. But we think that cod-liver oil or malt extract would be better still.