posed of one part of turpentine and two parts of camphorated oil. It is well also to apply a jacket made of sheet cotton over the whole chest. It is essential to keep the room at a temperature of about 70° F. and well ventilated, not permitting babies to crawl on the floor when able to be up, or to pass from a warm to a cold room. Sweet spirit of niter is a serviceable remedy to use at the beginning: five to fifteen drops every two hours in water for a child from one to ten years of age, for the first day or two. If the cough is harsh, hard, or croupy (see p. 97), give syrup of ipecac every two hours: ten drops to an infant of one year or under, thirty drops to a child of ten years, unless it causes nausea or vomiting, when the dose may be reduced one-half. If children become "stuffed up" with secretion so that the breathing is difficult and noisy, give a teaspoonful of the syrup of ipecac to make them vomit, for until they are six or seven years old children cannot expectorate, and mucus which is coughed up into the mouth is swallowed by them. Vomiting not only gets rid of that secretion which has been swallowed, but expels it from the bronchial tubes. This treatment may be repeated if the condition recurs. In infants under a year of age medicine is to be avoided as much as possible. A teaspoonful of sweet oil and molasses, equal parts, may be given occasionally to loosen the cough in mild cases. In other cases use the cough tablet for infants described on p. 105. A paste consisting of mustard, one part, and flour, twenty parts, is very useful when spread on a cloth and applied all about the chest, front and back. The diet should be only milk for young children during the first day or two, and older patients should not have much more than this, except toast and soups. In feeble babies with bronchitis it is wise to give five or ten drops of brandy or whisky in water every two hours, to relieve difficulty in breathing. Children who are subject to frequent colds, or those in whom cough is persistent, should receive Peter Möller's cod-liver oil, one-half to one teaspoonful, according to age, three times daily after eating. One of the emulsions may be used instead if the pure oil is unpalatable. Adenoids and enlarged tonsils are a fruitful source of constant colds and sore throat, and their removal is advisable (see p. 75). Hardening of the skin by daily sponge baths with cold salt water, while the child stands or sits in warm water, is effective as a preventive of colds, as is also an outof-door life with proper attention to clothing and foot gear. Treatment of Pneumonia. Patients developing the symptoms described as suggestive of pneumonia need the immediate attention of a physician. If a person is unfortunate enough to have the care of such a case, when it is impossible to secure a physician, it may afford some comfort to know that good nursing is really the prime requisite in aiding recovery, while skillful treatment is of most value if complications arise. One in every ten cases of pneumonia in ordinarily healthy people proves fatal. In specially selected young men, as soldiers, the death rate from pneumonia is only one in twenty-five cases. On the other hand, pneumonia is the common cause of death in old age; about seventy out of every hundred patients who die from pneumonia are between sixty and eighty years of age. Infants under a year old, and persons enfeebled with disease or suffering from excesses, particularly alcoholism, are also likely to die if stricken with the disease. The patient should go to bed in a large, well-ventilated, and sunny room. The temperature of the room should be about 70° F., and the patient must not be covered so warmly with clothing as to cause perspiration. A flannel jacket may be made to surround the chest, and should open down the whole front. The nightshirt is worn over this; nothing more. Daily sponging of the patient with tepid water (85° to 90° F.) should be practiced. The body is not to be all exposed at once, but each limb and the trunk are to be separately sponged and dried. If the fever is high (104° F.) the water should be cold (77° to 72° F.), and the sponging done every three hours in the case of a strong patient. Visitors must be absolutely forbidden. No more than one or two persons are to be allowed in the sick room at once. The diet should consist chiefly of milk, a glass every two hours, varied with milk mixed with thin cooked cereal or eggnog. It is wise to give at the beginning of the disease a cathartic, such as five grains of calomel followed in twelve hours by a Seidlitz powder, if the bowels do not act freely before that time. To relieve the pain in the side, if excruciating, give one-quarter grain morphine sulphate,' and repeat once, if necessary, in two hours. The application of an ice bag to the painful side frequently stops the pain, and, moreover, is excellent treatment throughout the course of the disease. The seat of pain usually indicates that the lung on that side is the inflamed one, so that the ice bag should be allowed to rest against that portion of the chest. Water should be freely supplied, and should be given as well as milk even if the patient is delirious. The bowels are to be moved daily by glycerin suppositories or injection of warm water. Dover's powder in doses of five grains is useful to assuage cough. It may be repeated once, after two hours' interval if desirable, but must not be employed at the same time as morphine. After the first two or three days are passed, or sooner in weak subjects, give strychnine sulphate, one-thirtieth grain, every six hours in pill or tablet form. The strychnine is to be continued until the temperature becomes normal, and then reduced about one-half in amount for a week or ten days 1 Caution. Dangerous. Use only on physician's order. while the patient remains in bed, as he must for some time after the temperature, pulse, and breathing have become normal. CONSUMPTION; TUBERCULOSIS OF THE LUNGS; PHTHISIS.-This disease demands especial attention, not only because it is above all others the great destroyer of human life, causing one-seventh of all deaths, but because, so far from being a surely fatal disease as popularly believed, it is an eminently curable disorder if recognized in its earliest stage. The most careful laboratory examinations of bodies dead from other causes, show that very many people have had tuberculosis at some time, and to some extent, during life. The reason why the disease fails to progress in most persons is that the system is strong enough to resist the inroads of the disease. The process becomes arrested by the germs being surrounded by a barrier of healthy tissue, and so perishing in their walled-in position. These facts prove that so far from being incurable, recovery from consumption frequently occurs without even our knowledge of the disease. It is only those cases which become so far advanced as to be easily recognized that are likely to result fatally. Many more cases of consumption are now cured than formerly, because exact methods have been discovered which enable us to determine the existence of the disease at an early stage of its development. Consumption is due to the growth of a special germ in the lungs. The disease is contagious, that is, it is ΙΙΟ |