Eruptions about the head, or sores behind the ears, discharging more or less, will sometimes make their appearance just before the cutting of a tooth, and disappear after it is cut; or it will sometimes happen that, if not interfered with, they will continue throughout the whole period of dentition.  Great caution should always be exercised in reference to these eruptions in all children; and when there is a predisposition to water in the head, it is dangerous to interfere with them at all, except they run to such an extent as to become very troublesome.  The sudden healing of these cutaneous affections has again and again been followed by head-disease.  They are unsightly in the eyes of a parent, but it must be recollected that they render the situation of such children much more safe; and when teething is completed they will generally disappear spontaneously; or, if they should not, they will readily do so by proper medical treatment.  I have no doubt that many a child’s life has been saved by the appearance and continuance of these eruptions; and so sensible are medical men of the benefit derived from them, that in individuals in whom they do not appear, and in whose family there exists a predisposition to the disease now under our consideration, an issue or seton, in the arm or neck, has sometimes been made, and had a remarkable influence in warding off this affection.  Dr. Cheyne refers to the circumstance of ten children in one family having died of this disease; the eleventh, for whom this measure was employed, having been preserved.

Stimulants, throughout the whole period of infancy and childhood, and of every description, must be prohibited.  Children nursed by drunken parents, and who have indulged in the use of spirituous liquors during suckling, are never healthy; are the frequent subjects of convulsions, and many of them die eventually of water in the head.  The practice of administering spirits to the child itself; a habit unfortunately not very uncommon among the lower classes; produces a similar result.  Narcotics may operate in a like manner:  they derange the whole system when persevered in, particularly affecting the brain; promote disease; and sometimes give rise to the one in question.  This remark should be borne in mind by the mother, as Godfrey’s Cordial and other preparations of opium are too often kept in the nursery, and secretly given by unprincipled nurses to quiet a restless and sick child.

All causes of mental excitement should be carefully avoided, and particularly the too early or excessive exercise of the intellectual faculties.  If the child be endowed with a precocious intellect, the parent must restrain rather than encourage its exercise.  Nothing is more likely to light up this disease in a constitution predisposed to it, than a premature exertion of the brain itself.