Volume 2

The modern practice of physic : exhibiting the symptoms, causes, prognostics, morbid appearances, and treatment of the diseases of all climates / Eleventh edition, thoroughly revised, corrected, and to a considerable extent re-written by A. Frampton.

  • Thomas, Robert, 1753-1835.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The modern practice of physic : exhibiting the symptoms, causes, prognostics, morbid appearances, and treatment of the diseases of all climates / Eleventh edition, thoroughly revised, corrected, and to a considerable extent re-written by A. Frampton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    564/596 (page 536)
    particularly in regard to food, air, and the state of the bowels. This seems a warrantable conclusion, inasmuch as the thrush is sometimes found to seize every infant in certain families, in what- ever way the children may be managed, as well as to occur occa- sionally in others upon a want of proper attention to the state of the alimentary canal, where a great number of other children, properly watched, have uniformly escaped it. This disease is rarely attended with much fever at its commence- ment, although the mouth is frequently so much heated as to excoriate the nipples of the nurse, and becomes so tender that the child is often observed to suck with reluctance and caution, and sometimes to swallow with difficulty. The subjects for the malady are, for the most part, sickly children, who have long laboured under greater or less impairment of their digestive functions. The bowels are generally relaxed, the evacuations of a green colour and very sour, and often so acrid as to irritate and inflame the anus and adjacent parts. The morbid appearances after death will depend upon the nature of the accompanying malady, to which also the constitutional treat- ment must be directed. And as there is generally an irritable state of the bowels with morbid and acid dejections, the alkaline and absorbent earths, chalk and magnesia, in some of the forms given above, afford the most appropriate remedies in the first in- stance. The bowels should also be gently acted on from time to time by castor oil, or a few grains of rhubarb and hydrarg. cum creta, till the dejections become healthy. After this the extract or decoction of bark, with soda, is useful in renovatiug the strength, or some of the mild preparations of iron, as the ammonio-citrate or ammonio-tartrate, may be resorted to. The compound decoction of sarsaparilla, with grain doses of iodide of potassium, is also beneficially employed in scrofulous children. The local treatment consists in cleansing the mouth, after each occasion when food has been taken, with a soft, clean linen rag tied on the end of a small stick or quill, and afterwards using a little of the mel boracis, or applying with a similar instrument a wash containing a scruple or half a drachm of borax to the ounce of water, or of rose water; or at times it will be necessary to touch the affected parts with a wash of five grains of nitrate of silver in an ounce of distilled Avater once or tAvice a day. The second form of stomatitis has been termed ulcerative, aud is the same affection as that more generally known as cancrum oris. And the third is that in which there is gangrenous inflamma- tion, generally involving the cheek; and if not arrested early, proving almost invariably fatal. The ulcerative stomatitis or cancrum oris attacks the gums, commencing for the msot part in front of those of the incisors, particularly those of the lower jaw. The gum is found to be red and swollen, the portion in contact with the teeth being eroded, and presenting a spongy and sloughy surface. The teeth are