The Mother's Manual of Children's DiseasesWest, Charles
Science
The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases
West, Charles
Pediatrics -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.
In every instance, then, in which the eyelids of a new-born infant
swell, or the slightest discharge appears from them, the attention of
the doctor must at once be called to the condition. In the meantime, and
during whatever treatment he may think it right to follow, the eye must
be constantly covered with a piece of folded lint dipped in cold water;
and every hour at least the eye must be opened and tepid water squeezed
into it abundantly from a sponge held above, but not touching it, so as
to completely wash away all the discharge. A weak solution of alum and
zinc, as one grain of the latter to three of the former to an ounce of
water, may in like manner be dropped from a large camel's-hair brush
four times a day into the eye after careful washing. Simple as these
measures are they yet suffice, if adopted at the very beginning, and
carried on perseveringly, to entirely cure in a few days an ailment
which if let alone leads almost always to most lamentable results.
I do not pursue the subject further, for bad cases require all the care
of the most skilful oculist for their treatment.
=Scalp Swellings.=--Almost every new-born child has on one or other side
of its head a puffy swelling, owing to the pressure to which the head
has been subjected in birth, and this swelling disappears at the end of
twenty-four or forty-eight hours.
Now and then, however, though indeed very seldom, the swelling does not
disappear, but it goes on gradually increasing and becoming more
definite in its outlines until at the end of three or four days it may
be as big as half a small orange, or sometimes even larger, soft,
elastic, painless, under the unchanged scalp, but presenting the
peculiarity of having a hard raised margin with a distinct edge, which
gives to the finger passed over it the sensation of a bony ridge, beyond
which the bone seems deficient. This tumour is due usually to the same
cause as that which produces the other temporary puffy swelling of the
scalp, only the pressure having been more severe, blood has actually
been forced out from the small vessels under the membrane which covers
the skull, and hence its gradual increase, its definite outline; and
hence, too, the bony ridge which surrounds it, and which is due to
nature's effort at cure, in the course of which the raised edge of the
membrane covering the skull (the _pericranium_) becomes converted into
bone.
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