NOTE.
In the paragraph on Sore Throat, page102, I alluded to the danger of giving hot drinks in scarlet fever: the same precautions were intended for measles, or any of the skin diseases. But owing to a circumstance which occurred with a young mother since the publication, I am constrained to add some special advice for the management of measles. This disease usually appears in the latter part of winter or the first of spring. Children of various ages are liable to take it. This disease comes on with some degree of sick headache, hot, dry skin, and not unfrequently with cough and sore throat. A person may have it more than once, it may be carried around in the clothes of visitors, or retained for some time in the bedding, wall papers and carpets. It is very dangerous to give hot drinks, to hasten the pimples to appear; they usually do so about the fourth day after the fever begins, and if nothing was given, unless the person was kept very cold indeed, they would appear. It is this mistaken interference with Nature that causes many fatal terminations of measles. The severe headache, heat, swollen face and eyes, denote that the treatment should be rather cooling, in order to mitigate the suffering. As a general thing measles need not be considered to be any more than a cold; with a gentle purge, warm baths, and drinks of warm water and lemonade, the patient will be all right in about eight or ten days. But as the lungs are liable to be more or less affected, a physician should be called in, that their true condition may be known in the commencement.