HOOPING-COUGH, or PERTUSSIS,,is an infectious, and sometimes epidemic dis ease, mostly attacking children, espeoially in the spring and autumn. Its earliest symptoms, which usually appear five or six days after exposure to infection, are those of a common cold, as hoarseness, a watery discharge from the eyes and nose, oppression of the chest, a short, dry cough, and more or less feverishness. This stage, which is called the catarrhal, lasts a week or ten days, when the fever remits, and the cough begins to be followed by the peculiar whoop which characterizes the disease, and which is caused by the inspiration of sir through the contracted cleft of the glottis. Sec LARYNX. The disorder may now be regarded as fully developed, and consists of paroxysms of severe coughing, which usually terminate in the expectoration of glairy mucus, or in vomiting. During the fit of conghing, the face becomes red or livid, the eyes project, and the child seizes some person or object near him for support. These. paroxysms occur at uncertain intervals, but usually about every two hours, and bet ween them the child returns to his play, takes his food with good appetite, and exhibits little or no sign of illness. The disease reaches its height at about the end of the fourth week, after which the paroxysms diminish in frequency, and the patient shows signs of improvement. The second stage may last from two to eight weeks, :Ind is succeeded by what may be termed the convalescent stage, the duration of which is very variable.
This is one of those diseases which seldom occur more than once in a lifetime; and hence it probably is that, as few children escape it. it is comparatively rarely noticed in adults. Morbid anatomy has failed to throw tiny direct light upon its special scat. The
proportion of deaths to recoveries in cases of hooping-cough has not been satisfactorily determined, but when there is a severe epidemic, the mortality due to this disease is often very great; the deaths, however, in the great majority of eases, occur amongst the poorer classes. This mortality is, in reality, due rather to the bronchitis and pneu monia (or inflammation of the lungs), which are frequent complications of hooping cough, than to the disease itself.
The treatment of hooping-cough, as long as it is uncomplicated or simple, should not be meddlesome. Nothing that can be prescribed in the early stages will check its natural course, and 'the object of the physician should be to ward off complications and to conduct the disease safely to its natural termination. The diet should consist of milk and unstimulating farinaceous matters. The bowels should be kept moderately open. If the weather is cold, the child should be kept in the house with the tempera ture of, the room at about A grain or a grain and a half of ipecac's:mho may be given three or four times a day. Slight counter-irritants may also be applied to the surface of the chest; Roche's embrocation. which consists of olive oil, with half its quantity of the oils of cloves and amber, is extensively used for this purpose. ing is so serviceable in the last or convalescent stageSis change of air, often even when from a pure to a comparatively impure atmosphere; and next to this, the internal Ilse of a solution of binoxide of hydrogen (see HYDROUEN, B1NOXIDE OF,) seems most worthy of trial.