Advice to a Mother on the Management of Her ChildrenChavasse, Pye Henry
Science
Advice to a Mother on the Management of Her Children
Chavasse, Pye Henry
Child care; Children -- Health and hygiene; Infants -- Health and hygiene
Sir CHARLES LOCOCK, who has taken a kind interest in this little work,
has given me valid reasons why a mother should be so enlightened. The
following extracts are from a letter which I received from Sir CHARLES
on the subject, and which he has courteously allowed me to publish. He
says,--"As an old physician of some experience in complaints of
infants and children, I may perhaps be allowed to suggest that in a
future edition you should add a few words on the actual treatment of
some of the more urgent infantile diseases. It is very right to
caution parents against superseding the doctor, and attempting to
manage serious illness themselves, but your advice, with very small
exceptions, always being 'to lose no tune in sending for a medical
man,' much valuable and often irremediable time may be lost _when a
medical man is not to be had_. Take, for instance, a case of croup
there are no directions given at all, except to send for a medical
man, and always to keep medicines in the house which he may have
directed. But how can this apply to a first attack? You state that a
first attack is generally the worst. But why is it so? Simply because
it often occurs when the parents do not recognise it, and it is
allowed to get a worse point than in subsequent attacks, when they are
thoroughly alive to it. As the very best remedy, and often the only
essential one, if given early, is a full emetic, surely it is better
that you should give some directions as to this in a future edition,
and I can speak from my own experience when I say that an emetic,
_given in time_, and repeated to free vomiting, will cut short _any_
case of croup. In nine cases out of ten the attack takes place in the
evening or early night, and when vomiting is effected the dinner of
that day is brought up nearly undigested, and the seventy of the
symptoms at once cut short. Whenever any remedy is valuable, the more
by its being administered _in time_, it is surely wiser to give
directions as to its use, although, as a general rule, it is much
better to advise the sending for medical advice."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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