A very useful and indeed powerful remedy prescribed in this disease, is sometimes rendered utterly useless from a want of a persevering and also proper mode of applying it, viz. cold applications to the head.  It is to be effected either by means of cloths kept constantly wet with cold water, or evaporating lotions; or by means of a bladder containing pounded ice mixed with water.  If the two former are employed they require frequent renewal, or they become dry, hot, and more injurious than useful; and whichever is used, it must be kept in constant contact with the forehead, temples, and upper part of the head.  Here is another error; they are seldom used large enough, and only partially cover these parts.  With the further view of keeping the head cool, and preventing the accumulation of heat, a flat horse-hair pillow should be employed, and the head and shoulders somewhat raised.

Perseverance in the measures prescribed, even when the case appears beyond all hope, must ever be the rule of conduct.  Recovery, even in the most advanced periods of the disease, in cases apparently desperate, occasionally takes place.  There is great reason to fear that many a child has been lost from a want of proper energy and perseverance on the part of the attendants in the sick room.  They fancy the case is hopeless, and, to use their own expression, “they will not torment the child with medicine or remedies any longer.”

“Whilst there is life, there is hope,” is a sentiment which may with great truth be applied to all the diseases of infancy and childhood.  Striking, indeed, are the recoveries which occasionally present themselves to the notice of medical men; and those individuals may with great justice be charged with unpardonable neglect who do not persevere in the employment of the remedies prescribed, even up to the last hours of the child’s existence.

INDEX.

Ablution, or sponging, 125.

Abstinence, its good effect, in flatulence and griping in the infant, 50. 226.

Accidents and diseases which may occur to the infant at birth or soon after, 187.

Acids, injurious to the teeth, 159.

Air and exercise, in infancy, 83. —­, in childhood, 89. —­, its importance to the mother whilst a nurse, 33.

Animal food, in childhood, 55.
—­, its injurious effects upon the young and delicate child, 58.

Aperient liniment, 107. —­, medicine, 97. —­, poultice, 104.

Artificial feeding; the causes rendering it necessary, 34.

Artificial food; the proper kind for the child before the sixth month, 35. —­; the mode of administering it, 39. —­; the quantity to be given at each meal, 42. —­; the frequency of giving it, 43. —­; the posture of the child when fed, 43. —­; the proper kind for the child after the sixth month, to the completion of first dentition, 44. —­; the kind most suitable under the different complaints to which infants are liable, 48.