Page:The physical training of children (IA 39002011126464.med.yale.edu).pdf/197

 Be careful that you go to a respectable chemist, in order ''that the quality of the ipecacuanha wine may be good, as the child's life may depend upon it''.

If the medicine produces sickness, so much the better; continue it regularly until the short, oppressed, and hurried breathing has subsided, and has become natural.

If the attack be very severe, in addition to the above medicine, at once apply a blister, not the common blister, but Smith's tela vesicatoria—a quarter of a sheet, which ought to be fastened on to a piece of sticking-plaster, taking care to apply the tela vesicatoria (which is on paper) to the warmed plaster, so as to securely fasten the tela vesicatoria on the sticking-plaster. The plaster should be rather larger than the blister, so as to leave a margin. Any respectable chemist will understand the above directions, and will prepare the tela ready for use. If the child be a year old, the blister ought to be kept on for three hours, and then a piece of dry, soft linen rag should be applied for another three hours. At the end of which time—six hours—there will be a beautiful blister, which must then, with a pair of scissors, be cut, to let out the water; and then let the blister be dressed, night and morning, with simple cerate spread on lint.

If the little patient be more than one year, say two years old, let the tela remain on for five hours, and the dry linen rag for five hours more, before the blister, as above recommended, be cut and dressed.

If in a day or two the inflammation still continue violent, let another tela vesicatoria be applied, not over the old blister, but let a narrow slip of it, on sticking-plaster, be applied on each side of the old blister, and managed in the same manner as before directed.

I cannot speak too highly of Smith's tela vesicatoria. It has, in my hands, through God's blessing, saved the lives of scores of children. It is far, very far superior to the