MUMPS, THE, is a popular name of a specific inflammation of the salivary glands described by nosologists as eynanche parotidaaor or parotids. In Scotland it is frequemiy termed the trunks.
The disorder usually begins with a feeling of stiffness about the jaws, which is fol lowed by pains, heat, and swelling beneath the ear. The swelling begins in the parotid, but the other salivary glands (q.v.) usually soon become implicated, so that the swelling extends along the neck toward the chin, thus giving the patient a deformed and some what grotesque appearance. One or both sides may be affected, and, in general, the disease appears first on one side and then on the other. There is seldom much fever. The inflammation is usually at its highest point in three or four days, after which it begins to decline, suppuration of the glands scarcely ever occurring. In most eases no treatment further than antiphlogistic regimen, due attention to the bowels, and protection of the parts from cold, by the application of flannel or cotton-wool, is required, and the patient completely recovers in eight or ten days.
The disease often originates from epidemic or endemic influences, but there can be no doubt that it spreads by contagion; and, like most contagious diseases, it seldom affects the same person twice. It chiefly attacks children anti young persons.
A singular circumstance connected with the disease is, that in many cases the subsi deuce of the swelling is immediately followed by swelling and pain in the testes in the male sex, and in the mamma in the female. The inflammation in these glands is seldom very painful or long continued, but occasionally the iitflammation is transferred from these organs to the brain, when a comparatively trifling disorder is converted into a most perilous disease.