The Mother's Manual of Children's DiseasesWest, Charles
Science
The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases
West, Charles
Pediatrics -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.
It is on the cheeks, the sides of the face, and the top of the head that
these changes may be best studied, but there are other situations in
which the same kind of process often goes on. It may be seen in the
creases of the neck, or the folds of the thigh in fat children, only as
two surfaces of skin are there in contact the fluid never dries to a
crust, but the skin, red and sore and swollen, pours out an abundant
secretion which, just as when it occurs behind the ears, gives out a
strong and offensive smell. It occurs, too, at the bends of the joints,
as under the knee, and at the inside of the elbow joint, as well as on
the front of the chest, the back, and sometimes even over the whole
body, and especially at any part where the pressure of the dress
irritates the skin. When thus general, it seldom fails to pass into a
chronic state such as to call for constant, skilled medical treatment.
The attack often comes on with general feverishness, a hot skin,
fretfulness, and restlessness, which subside when the skin begins to
discharge, though the discomfort produced by the local irritation still
continues. At other times, and this perhaps more often when the eruption
first appears on the head, its onset is more gradual, and slight
scurfiness and redness at the top of the head are first noticed, and
then a little crust forms there which is firmly adherent, and is,
therefore, often not entirely removed as it should be, and thus bit by
bit the mischief extends until its cure becomes tedious and troublesome.
When either from neglect, or from the ailment having set in acutely, the
affection of the scalp is severe, the child's state is one of much
suffering. The whole of the scalp becomes hot and swollen, and covered
over a large surface by a thick dirty crust, through cracks in which a
thick ill-smelling greenish-yellow matter exudes on pressure. At
different points around, pimples form with mattery heads,--pustules they
are called--while the glands on each side of the neck become swollen and
tender. When thus severe on the head it will be found also not merely on
the face, but also on the body, and the poor suffering child is not only
a miserable object to look upon, but, worn by constant restlessness, it
loses flesh, and seems almost as though it could not long survive.
Happily, however, the condition scarcely ever terminates fatally, though
feeble health and stunted growth are not seldom the results of the early
suffering. But besides, severe eczema in infancy always returns again
and again in childhood and in after-life, and there is also a distinct
connection between liability to eczema and to asthma; and this not
simply nor mainly that the disappearance of an attack of eczema may be
succeeded by an attack of asthma, but that the child who in infancy has
had severe general eczema is more prone than another to develop a
disposition to asthma as he attains the age of five or six, and this
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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