paroxysmal cough
undistinguishable save by its milder character and shorter duration from
the previous hooping-cough, though I believe incapable of communicating
that disease.

In mild hooping-cough there is little or nothing to be done, save to
follow the dictates of common sense, and not to neglect them in quest of
some imaginary specific--some vaunted medicine which is said to be a
certain cure; or such as shutting up the child in a room the atmosphere
of which is charged with the vapour of tar, or of carbolic acid, or of
sulphur.

It cannot be too strongly impressed on the minds of parents that there
is no specific whatever for hooping-cough; no remedy which will cut it
short, as quinine cuts short a fit of ague. The domestic treatment of
mild hooping-cough is the domestic treatment of a common cold, implying
the same precautions as to the equal temperature of the day and night
nursery, the little doses of ipecacuanha at night, but as seldom as
possible during the day, in order not to interfere with the appetite and
digestion, together with special care to insure the regular action of
the bowels. It sometimes happens that after a week or two the severer
fits of coughing are followed by vomiting; and the child may lose flesh
and strength from inability to retain its food. In these circumstances
food must be given, little in quantity, at short intervals, and of a
kind that need not remain long in the stomach in order to be digested.
Good soup, beef-tea, milk, rice milk, or a raw egg beaten up in milk,
and biscuit rather than bread, must take the place of the ordinary
meals, and be given twice as often.

The different liniments, and the favourite Roche's Embrocation, are of
use when the disease is on the decline, and may also be of service if
bronchitis should occur to complicate the hooping-cough, but not
otherwise.

Change of air when hooping-cough is on the decline is often of great
service, and change even from good air to one less good appears to be
sometimes of use; but change in the early stages, or when hooping-cough
has become really severe, is but adding another to the already existing
dangers.

The danger in hooping-cough arises through the medium either of the
head or of the lungs, and through each of them with about equal
frequency. The head becomes affected in consequence of the often
recurring congestion of the brain, produced, as in spasmodic croup, by
the constantly returning interruption to th