The maternal management of children, in health and diseaseBull, Thomas
Science
The maternal management of children, in health and disease
Bull, Thomas
Child care
Stimulants, throughout the whole period of infancy and childhood, and
of every description, must be prohibited. Children nursed by drunken
parents, and who have indulged in the use of spirituous liquors during
suckling, are never healthy; are the frequent subjects of convulsions,
and many of them die eventually of water in the head. The practice of
administering spirits to the child itself; a habit unfortunately not
very uncommon among the lower classes; produces a similar result.
Narcotics may operate in a like manner: they derange the whole system
when persevered in, particularly affecting the brain; promote disease;
and sometimes give rise to the one in question. This remark should be
borne in mind by the mother, as Godfrey's Cordial and other
preparations of opium are too often kept in the nursery, and secretly
given by unprincipled nurses to quiet a restless and sick child.
All causes of mental excitement should be carefully avoided, and
particularly the too early or excessive exercise of the intellectual
faculties. If the child be endowed with a precocious intellect, the
parent must restrain rather than encourage its exercise. Nothing is
more likely to light up this disease in a constitution predisposed to
it, than a premature exertion of the brain itself.
MATERNAL MANAGEMENT OF THE DISEASE.--The early detection of this
disease is of great importance. The chances that the medical treatment
will terminate successfully much depend upon the early and prompt
application of remedial means. The reason why these cases have so often
terminated fatally has arisen from the physician being consulted when
irremediable mischief had already taken place. It would be difficult,
however, to point out the signs of its approach in all its forms (for
this disease does not always commence in the same way, sometimes with
fever, etc.), still it most frequently occurs preceded by certain
striking and well-marked symptoms; and whenever the following are
noticed by the parent apprehensive of mischief, she should at once send
for her medical adviser:--watchfulness, or starting from sleep with a
cry of alarm; prolonged screaming without any obvious cause; moaning
and drowsiness; rolling the head from side to side on the nurse's
arm, or thrusting it back against the pillow; knitting the brows and
aversion from light, with heat of head, and constant carrying the
little hand up to it; half closing the eyelids, and frequent vomiting.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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