Volume 1

A practical treatise on the management and diseases of children / By R.T. Evanson and H. Maunsell.

  • Evanson, Richard T. (Richard Tonson), 1806-1871.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on the management and diseases of children / By R.T. Evanson and H. Maunsell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    104/502 (page 94)
    such diseases should have been passed through in early life; and we may be consulted as to the prudence of leaving a child exposed to any of these complaints, or removing it for security. If the child be healthy, and the type of the prevailing epidemic mild,* it will m general be best to allow the child to remain; but when the infant is delicate, teething, or only recovering from a former illness, and under any circumstances, when the type of the prevailing disorder is severe or malignant, it will be advisable to take every precaution against the malady. It is well, also, to keep in mind that contagion is most hable to be communicated at the decline of these complaints, after maturation has taken place, and while desquamation is going on. Hence, we may not be too late in separating children after the disease has actually appeared in a family; but cannot, with any safety, permit them to come together on its decline, or too soon, during con- valescence. | Cutaneous diseases, to which children are so liable, from the deli- cacy of their skin, and the great sympathy between the cutaneous surface and the liming membrane of the digestive organs, partake not a little of the nature of the eruptive fevers, many running a regular course, or stated period of increase, maturation, and decline ; while some are highly contagious, differmg chiefly from the exanthemata in the absence of fever. More unsightly than dangerous in their nature, when not mismanaged in treatment, we need not participate in the great horror in which diseases of the skin are held by the fond mother, who little likes to see the beauty of her offspring thus de- formed ; while as far are we from agreeing with the ignorant nurse, who rejoices in the great good which the constitution is to derive from the coming out of the eruption. Some may be occasionally beneficial, as points of derivation to counteract cerebral, or oftener, abdominal irritation, or that induced by the process of teething; and a few are, perhaps, critical. But none do we hesitate to remove after proper precautions; and many, which to ordinary means, prove most rebellious, will be found, in due time, to disappear, under a well regulated discipline. The protracted continuance, however, of most, does serious damage to the health, wearing out the child by constant * The type of an epidemic is not to be judged of by the character of a parti- cular case, but by the general character of the complaint then prevailing ; as very severe forms of disease may be communicated by a mild case; the opposite occasionally occurs. [Note to 4th Edition. ]