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.

    108/502 (page 98)
    In the child, scrofula is particularly liable to display itself by attack- ing the glands of the neck; and enlarged tonsils are frequently met with at this period of life; but mere enlargement of the tonsils or cervical glands is not to be looked upon as necessarily originating in scrofula, or as constituting of itself evidence of its existence. Glan- dular disease is common at this age; mumps, an affection of the parotid gland, occurs usually in childhood; and even this is liable to be transferred by metastasis to other glands; the testicle, or the mamme. Hnlargement of the mesenteric glands, leading to disor- ganization, and the establishment of tabes mesenterica, usually com- mences during chidhood. The pancreas, also, we have seen atf- fected. Lombard found it the seat of tubercle, in one case in twenty of tuberculous children. The formation of tubercle in the child is not less remarkable than the hability to glandular disease, though it has attracted much less notice, and both seem alike allied to a scro- fulous taint or strumous diathesis; but we agree with Dunglison in regarding the scrofulous and tuberculous constitutions, although congenerous, as so far distinct, that tuberculous deposit and glan- dular disease by no means necessarily go together. Infants have been born with tuberculous deposits in different parts of the body, and these in various stages of advancement, even to softening and ulceration. Tubercle seldom occurs in other parts of the body with- out being found at the same time in the lungs; and _ true tubercular phthisis is a disease which we have not only seen in the young infant, but which appears to be an affection to which children are so liable, (particularly about three or four years of age,) that an eminent writer treats of the phthisis (consumption) of infancy and childhood asa dis- tinct variety.* We have seen such cases regarded to the last, as Instances of remittent fever complicated with cough, and hopes thus held out which could not be realized. 'Tubercular formations are most lable to occur in the debilitated state of constitution following febrile attacks in children, or during protracted convalescence there- from, and are often called into action by attacks of bronchitis, espe- cially after remittent fever, measles, or scarlatina; or when the system has long suffered from severe cutaneous disease. Hence, there is a particular danger in inflammatory affections occurring * See Sir James Clarke’s valuable ‘‘ Treatise on Consumption and Scrofula,” pends