Sect.  III.—­Opiates.

This class of medicine is often kept in the nursery, in the forms of laudanum, syrup of white poppies, Dalby’s carminative, and Godfrey’s cordial.

The object with which they are generally given is to allay pain by producing sleep; they are, therefore, remedies of great convenience to the nurse; and I am sorry to be obliged to add, that, so exhibited, they are but too often fatal to the little patient.

The fact is, that in the hands of the physician, there is no medicine the administration of which requires greater caution and judgment than opiates, both from the susceptibility of infants to their narcotic influence, and their varying capability of bearing it; the danger, therefore, with which their use is fraught in the hands of a nurse should for ever exclude them from the list of domestic nursery medicines.

Dalby’s carminative and Godfrey’s cordial are, perhaps, more frequently used than any other forms; and some striking cases, illustrative of the fatal results of exhibiting them indiscriminately, and without medical sanction, are on record.[FN#21] The late Dr. Clark, in his “Commentaries,” mentions a case which he saw, where “forty drops of Dolly’s carminative destroyed an infant.”  Dr. Merriman gives the following in a note in Underwood, “On the Diseases of Children:”—­

[FN#21] Two or three fatal cases, and upon which coroners’ inquests were held, have occurred within the last two years.

“A woman, living near Fitzroy Square, thinking her child not quite well, gave it a dose of Godfrey’s cordial, which she purchased at a chemist’s in the neighbourhood.  In a very short time after taking it the child fell into convulsions, and soon died.  In less than a month the child of another woman in the same house was found to be ill with disordered bowels.  The first woman, not at all suspecting that the Godfrey’s cordial had produced the convulsions in her infant, persuaded her friend to give the same medicine to her child.  A dose from the same bottle was given, and this child was likewise attacked almost immediately with convulsions, and also died.”

Convulsions and epilepsy, without such fatal results as the foregoing, are not uncommon as the effect of a single dose of an opiate given unadvisedly; and by their continued and habitual use (and the form of syrup of poppies is but too often administered by an indiscreet and lazy nurse, unknown by the parent), a low, irritative, febrile state is produced, gradually followed by loss of flesh, the countenance becoming pallid, sallow, and sunken, the eyes red and swollen, and the expression stupid and heavy, and the powers of the constitution at last becoming completely undermined.  Such an object is to be seen daily among the poorer classes,—­the miniature of a sickly aged person:  death soon follows here.

Sect.  IV.—­Leeching.

Difficulty sometimes arises in putting a stop to the bleeding from leech-bites; a matter of considerable importance in the case of a delicate infant.  The following measures may be resorted to for this purpose:—­