On the cerebral diseases of children, with regard to their early manifestations and treatment / by Walter C. Dendy.

  • Dendy, Walter Cooper.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the cerebral diseases of children, with regard to their early manifestations and treatment / by Walter C. Dendy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    The combination of liquor ammonia? acetatis, spiritus etheris nitrici, and antimonium tartarizatum, will usually regulate the other secretions. It will often be requisite to combine the calomel with other remedies. Thus, if diarrhoea be present, chalk or Dover's powder may be added. If there be debility or exhaustion, or if the habit be cachectic, or if prostrate coma supervene, camphor may be combined, from a quarter to half a grain, twice or thrice in a day. If vomiting continue after the urgent symptoms are relieved, mag- nesia, with lemon juice, or fluid magnesia, with half a drop or more of Battley's sedative solution, may often afford relief. It is in the protracted case especially, where free depletion is contraindicated, that stimulating enemata are so valuable. A drachm of castor oil, and half a drachm of oil of turpentine, may be given in thin gruel, even to the infant, often, with the effect of inducing quietude, or the removal of a comatose condition. In those cases consecutive to scarlatina or other exanthemata deple- tion, though usually essential, must be more limited. The quantity should be very small, and repeated two or three times at intervals. It is in these cases that digitalis is so valuable a remedy, especially if com- bined with very small doses of calomel. As there is often, however, much debility, the syrup of iodide of iron may be combined with great benefit twice or thrice in a day, and this without the imputation of a paradox. When otitis occurs in children, we should ever be watchful of the ultimate results. Leeches should be freely applied on the mastoid pro- cess, and after twenty-four hours vesication induced on the same spot, the sore being kept open with savine or mercurial ointment. In some cases of great prostration, dry cupping may be more advisable. The other antiphlogistic remedies I need not refer to. If suppuration should be suspected, linseed poultice, or the newly- adopted piline, should be assiduously applied, with the aim of soliciting the course of pus towards the mastoid cells, a comparatively unimportant spot- and if abscess points there, or we can detect pus, an opening should be made early, or deep incision on the cells, or the trephine may be used, if we can safely reach the abscess by such a mode: it is of vital importance to prevent the inward progress of matter. When encephalitis has continued for several days unrelieved, and has not by its interference with the functions of the brain, or by exhaustion, been fatal, the second stage or result of the disorder will have super- vened. This maybe suppuration is rare in very young children; the more common result is effusion of serum. Even after this deposition, acute symptoms may still call for active treatment, especially the continuation of decided counteraction, by
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