Pneumonia is a very common disease in childhood. It is the most frequent complication of the various acute infectious diseases. Pneumonia is an exceedingly important factor in the mortality of infancy.
There are two kinds of pneumonia:—
1. Broncho-pneumonia.
2. Lobar-pneumonia.
Acute Broncho-Pneumonia.—Up to the fourth year this is the form of pneumonia always present. It is the form that always complicates other diseases all through childhood.
It is most apt to occur during the spring and winter months.
It affects all classes, but especially those whose hygienic surroundings are poor. Catching cold is the exciting cause in a large percentage of primary pneumonias.
Symptoms.—Broncho-pneumonia has no regular course. It may or it may not follow a cold or an attack of bronchitis. As a rule it begins suddenly with a high fever, frequently accompanied by vomiting, rapid respiration, cough, and prostration.
The child does not maintain a high fever continuously; it varies considerably throughout each twenty-four hours. It lasts from one to three weeks, and subsides gradually.
The respirations vary between 60 and 80 per minute, though they may be much more frequent than this. The child breathes with apparent difficulty, the soft parts of the cheeks and nose rising and falling as it breathes.
The prostration becomes, as the disease progresses, more and more marked, until the child looks profoundly sick.