old.

It occurs, however, comparatively seldom during the first three or four
months of life, probably because very young children are kept more at
home than others, and are thus less exposed to catch it. Though
hooping-cough is undoubtedly very contagious, it seems to be
communicated only by the breath, and there is absolutely no evidence to
show that the clothes of a child suffering from hooping-cough can carry
the infection as they might were the child suffering from measles, or
smallpox, or scarlet-fever; still less that a person who has visited a
room where children are suffering from hooping-cough can convey the
disease to another house, or to other children.

The disease derives its name, as everyone knows, from the peculiar sound
which attends the cough, and which is due, as is the sound of croup, to
spasm of the upper part of the windpipe. It is equally characterised by
the cough returning in fits or paroxysms, which end in a long-drawn
breath, attended by the hoop. An occasional sound like a hoop, in a
young child who has a cold, is not so conclusive of a case being one of
hooping-cough as is the recurrence of the cough in fits; for until
teething is completed, slight and temporary irritation will suffice to
produce a passing spasm of the upper part of the windpipe.

An ordinary attack of hooping-cough begins like a common cold, but as
the little ailment passes off, the cough still continues, the fits of
coughing become more frequent, last longer, grow severer and more
suffocative, and end with the loud long breath, the hoop; while
sometimes no sooner is one fit over than another follows it almost
immediately, and quiet breathing does not return until the child is
tired out by its efforts. Nevertheless, the child's health continues
fairly good, and little or nothing ails it during the intervals of the
cough. For about a fortnight the cough usually goes on to increase; and
during this time the night attacks especially become more frequent. It
then for a week or ten days continues stationary, and then declines, a
diminution in the frequency and severity of the night attacks being in
general the first sign of amendment, and at the end of six weeks from
the beginning of the attack the child is in general quite convalescent.
Even then, however, a trifling cause will reproduce the characteristic
cough for a few days, and not seldom for many months afterwards any cold
which the child may catch will be attended by a