ircumstance of its
being contagious; and is on that account of very long duration; as the
whole of the lungs are probably not infected at the same time, but the
contagious inflammation continues gradually to creep on the membrane. It
may in this respect be compared to the ulcers in the pulmonary consumption;
but it differs in this, that in chin-cough some branches of the bronchia
heal, as others become inflamed.

This complaint is not usually classed amongst febrile disorders, but a
sensitive fever may generally be perceived to attend it during some part of
the day, especially in weak patients. And a peripneumony very frequently
supervenes, and destroys great numbers of children, except the lancet or
four or six leeches be immediately and repeatedly used. When the child has
permanent difficulty of breathing, which continues between the coughing
fits: unless blood be taken from it, it dies in two, three, or four days of
the inflammation of the lungs. During this permanent difficulty of
breathing the hooping-cough abates, or quite ceases, and returns again
after once or twice bleeding; which is then a good symptom, as the child
now possessing the power to cough shews the difficulty of breathing to be
abated. I dwell longer upon this, because many lose their lives from the
difficulty there is in bleeding young children; where the apothecary is old
or clumsy, or is not furnished with a very sharp and fine-pointed lancet.
In this distressing situation the application of four leeches to one of the
child's legs, the wounds made by which should continue to bleed an hour or
two, is a succedaneum; and saves the patient, if repeated once or twice
according to the difficulty of the respiration.

The chin-cough seems to resemble the gonorrhoea venerea in several
circumstances. They are both received by infection, are both diseases of
the mucous membrane, are both generally cured in four or six weeks without
medicine. If ulcers in the cellular membrane under the mucous membrane
occur, they are of a phagedenic kind, and destroy the patient in both
diseases, if no medicine be administered.

Hence the cure should be similar in both these diseases; first general
evacuations and diluents, then, after a week or two, I have believed the
following pills of great advantage. The dose for a child of about three
years old was one sixth part of a grain of calomel, one sixth part of a
grain of opium, and two grains of rhubarb, to be taken twice a