Page:The physical training of children (IA 39002011126464.med.yale.edu).pdf/186

 who have been dry-nursed (especially if they have been improperly fed), or who have been suckled too long, or who have had consumptive mothers, or who have suffered severely from teething, or who are naturally of a feeble constitution. Water on the brain sometimes follows an attack of inflammation of the lungs, more especially if depressing measures (such as excessive leeching and the administration of emetic tartar) have been adopted. It occasionally follows in the train of contagious eruptive diseases, such as either small-pox or scarlatina. We may divide the symptoms of water on the brain into two stages. The first—the premonitory stage—which lasts four or five days, in which medical aid might be of great avail; the second—the stage of drowsiness and of coma—which usually ends in death.

I shall dwell on the first—the premonitory stage—in order that a mother may see the importance without loss of time of calling in a medical man:

If her child be feverish and irritable, if his stomach be disordered, if he have urgent vomitings, if he have a foul breath, if his appetite be capricious and bad, if his nights be disturbed (screaming out in his sleep), if his bowels be disordered, more especially if they be constipated, if he be more than usually excited, if his eye gleam with unusual brilliancy, if his tongue run faster than it is wont, if his cheek be flushed and his head be hot, and if he be constantly putting his hand to his head, there is cause for suspicion. If to these symptoms be added, a more than usual carelessness in tumbling about, in hitching his foot in the carpet, or in dragging one foot after the other; if, too, he has complained of darting, shooting, lancinating pains in his head, it may then be known that the first stage of inflammation (the forerunner of water on the brain) either has taken or is about taking place. Remember, no time ought to be lost in obtaining medical aid; for the