Page:The physical training of children (IA 39002011126464.med.yale.edu).pdf/264

 Symptoms.—When a child is about nine months or a year old, small pimples are apt to break out around the ears, on the forehead, and on the head. These pimples at length become vesicles (that is to say, they contain water), which run into one large one, break, and form a nasty dirty-looking yellowish, and sometimes greenish scab, which scab is moist, indeed, sometimes quite wet, and gives out a disagreeable odor, and which is sometimes so large on the head as actually to form a scull-cap, and so extensive on the face as to form a mask! These, I am happy to say, are rare cases. The child's beauty is, of course, for a time completely destroyed, and not only his beauty, but his good temper; for as the eruption causes great irritation and itching, he is constantly clawing himself, and crying with annoyance a great part of the day, and sometimes also of the night, the eruption preventing him from sleeping. It is not contagious, and soon after he has cut the whole of his first set of teeth, it will get well, provided it has not been improperly interfered with.

Causes.—Irritation from teething; stuffing him with overmuch meat, thus producing a humor, which Nature tries to get rid of by throwing it out on the surface of the body, the safest place she could fix on for the purpose, hence the folly and danger of giving medicines and applying external applications to drive the eruption in. "Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth in strange eruptions," and cures herself in this way, if she be not too much interfered with, and if the eruption be not driven in by injudicious treatment. I have known in such cases disastrous consequences to follow over-officiousness and meddlesomeness. Nature is trying all she can to drive the humor out, while some wiseacres are doing all they can to drive the humor in.

Duration.—As milk-crust is a tedious affair, and will require a variety of treatment, it will be necessary to