Vaccination is still a mooted question among persons who argue that smallpox is now so rare that vaccination is unnecessary. This is a mistaken idea. Smallpox is rare because vaccination is commonly practiced. The healthy, normal baby should be vaccinated when he is about six months of age, and subsequently once in five years. If at any period between these dates he is exposed to the disease, he should be vaccinated immediately. Parents who object to compulsory vaccination in the schools can avoid this by having their children vaccinated at home by the family physician. If the latter is conscientious in selecting the vaccine, and the wound is kept clean until it is healed, there is absolutely no danger from infection of any kind. Occasionally one hears of a case where vaccination has been followed by some form of poisoning. This can almost invariably be traced to carelessness in the care of the wound, not to the quality of the vaccine used. CHAPTER XIV NURSERY EMERGENCIES CONTAGIOUS DISEASES: SYMPTOMS, TREATMENT AND QUARANTINE—CROUP AND ITS TREATMENT—CONVULSIONS—WHEN PALLS ARE DANGEROUS—BURNS AND CUTS—POISONS AND THEIR ANTIDOTES The modern mother is prepared to meet emergencies in the nursery far more capably than was your mother or mine. The open discussion, in the public press, of contagion and of accidents and their treatment, has educated the modern woman to cope with them. Thus women are learning how to provide against emergencies, how to protect their children from contagion, and how to guard against accident. Most of us can look back to the day when the child was expected to “catch” a certain number of contagious diseases; it was part of normal development, like the cutting of teeth and the learning to walk; and the sooner they had them and got over them the better for all concerned. We have learned that a child can grow up without having a single contagious disease, and that men and women live and thrive and attain a ripe old age without contracting measles, scarlet fever, whooping-cough, any more than they must necessarily have pneumonia or typhoid. Contagious disease is not a normal feature of a child’s growth. It is an emergency, and as such it is placed in this chapter. With each disease under consideration I am giving the period of quarantine prescribed by the Health Board of New York City. Every mother should respect these tables, whether she lives in a city, where quarantine is enforced, or in the country districts where it is not even recognized. None of us has the right to spread disease just because we have had it in our own household.