DISEASED TONSILS
Tonsils which remain permanently enlarged and show signs of disease and debilitation—filled crypts—may be removed as early as the fourth or fifth year, if necessary. If proper treatment does not improve the tonsils as the child grows older, their removal should seriously be considered. The tonsils may serve some special secretory or defensive function during the first few years of life and we think best, therefore, not to advise their removal—except in extreme cases—until the child is at least four or five years old.
When it is necessary to attack the tonsils, they should be thoroughly dissected out—not merely burned or clipped off. If they are properly removed, the danger of heart trouble, rheumatism, and many other infections may be considered as greatly lessened.
After five years of age the normal tonsils should begin to shrink, and at about the beginning of adolescence they should be no larger than a small lima bean, hidden almost completely out of sight behind the pillars of the throat. While healthy tonsils may serve some useful purpose even in the adult, it is almost universally conceded that the thoroughly bad and diseased tonsil is utterly useless to the body—only an open gateway for the entrance of infection.
BRONCHITIS
A very common disorder of early infancy and childhood is bronchitis—an inflammation of the bronchial tubes—accompanied by severe coughing. Its tendency to pass into pneumonia renders it a disease for skilled hands to treat—a disorder hardly safe for even the well-meaning mother to undertake to manage without medical advice and help. And since bronchitis is usually accompanied by alarming symptoms of high fever, weakened heart, embarrassed breathing, mottled or blue skin, green stools, troublesome cough, disturbed sleep, "stopped up nose," and "choked up throat," it is of utmost importance not only to seek medical aid early, but also that the mother, herself, should have definite ideas concerning the proper manner of doing the following things in the line of treatment:
- Making and applying a mustard paste.
- The fashioning of an oil-silk jacket.
- Improvising a steam tent.
- Flushing out the colon, and a score of other things which the watchful doctor may want given any moment.
Mustard Pastes are prepared by mixing one part of mustard and six parts of flour in warm water and applying to the chest between two pieces of thin muslin. It is left on just seven minutes and then talcum powder is thickly sprinkled on the moist, reddened skin; this powder quickly absorbs all the moisture and leaves the skin in a good condition—ready for another paste in three hours if it is so ordered.
The Oil-Silk Jacket, or pneumonia jacket, consists of three layers—the inside of cheesecloth, an inner thin sheet of cotton wadding, and an outside layer of oil silk (procurable at any drug store). It should open on the shoulder and under the arm on the same side. It is worn constantly (change for fresh cheesecloth and cotton every day) during the inflammatory stage; it is removed only during the mustard pastes.
A Steam Tent may be prepared by placing a sheet over the infant's crib and allowing steam to enter from a large paper funnel placed in the nose of a tea kettle of boiling water kept hot on a small stove of some sort.