Treatment seems of little value in this dis ease, yet rare recoveries have taken place in cases presenting all its symptoms.
1. Place the patient in a quiet, darkened room, well ventilated and kept at a moderate warmth, and let the person be kept warm by flannel clothing if necessary.
2. Relieve the constipation of bowels by calomel and jalap (Ptt7Jseair-rroxs), or castor oil. If these fail, injections of castor-oil and hot water, or hot water and salt (see p. 592), may succeed. 3. Give fluid nourishment—milk, beef-tea, &c. 4. The headache may be relieved by iced cloths. 5. To relieve the excitement and diminish the tendency to convulsions give to a child 5-grain doses of bromide of potas sium dissolved in a little water every three hours; an adult may get 30-grain doses. if recovery should take place, pure milk, cod-liver oil, and sea air will greatly aid it.
If one child out of a family has died of this disease, pains should be taken with the other children to ward it of from them, and unceasing watchfulness for the earliest indication (g the afection should be exercised till the child is seven years of age. The children should be permitted no excitements; their studies should be neither long-continued at one time nor severe ; they should have early hours, have well-ventilated rooms in some healthy locality, and good nourishment. They should also have a course of cod-liver oil and tonics.
Inflammation of the Brain itself (Cere. brier's) is not easily, if at all, distinguishable from inflammation of the membranes. Usually both brain and membranes are attacked to gether.
The symptoms are similar to those already described—fever, hard irregular pulse, consti pation, sickness, and vomiting. There are also severe headache, impatience of light, confusion of thought, and perhaps delirium. These are followed by stupor, dulness of sight and hear ing, perhaps squinting, and sometimes convul sions. The disease may begin its course in a long convulsion, and the convulsive seizures may end in paralysis or deep unconsciousness —coma as it is called.
The treatment consists largely in admini stering strong purgative medicines, such as calomel and jalap (see PRESCRIPTIONS). Also for a full-grown man bromide of potassium in 15- to 30•grain doses every five hours, and iodide of potassium in 3-grain doses every four or six hours may be given to diminish if possible the inflammation and excitement. The
head should be shaved, and iced cloths applied. Mustard foot-baths are sometimes used ; also mustard blisters to nape of neck (the benefit from which is doubtful) and bleeding. The latter should never be employed unless by medical advice. Milk diet is to be given; and if exhaustion sets in, strong beef-tea and stimu lants of Ammonia, wine, or brandy may be requ iced.
Softening of the Brain is sometimes a consequence of inflammation, but is oftener due to want of proper circulation of blood, and is therefore more common in old and feeble people. A frequent way in which a region of the brain may be deprived of its due supply of blood is by a small clot being carried, in the current of blood, from the heart diseased on account of rheumatism. The clot passes along the larger blood-vessels quite safely, but sticks when it reaches the narrower vessels of the brain. It, therefore, blocks the vessel and prevents the blood passing on to that district which the vessel supplied by itself and its branches. The clot which acts thus as a plug is called an embolus, and the disease is said to he embolism. The region of brain thus de prived of blood becomes soft and breaks down.
The symptoms of such a case of sudden occurrence are loss of power of one side of the body—the opposite side to that on which the disease of the brain exists. The loss of power is sudden and may be without loss of consciousness. Complete or partial recovery may take place. Oftener recovery will not take place, but the intellect gets impaired, and the person childish and feeble, surviving in that condition for some time, and filially becoming unconscious, and death resulting. Softening of the brain may occur more slowly and be accompanied by such signs as weaken ing of intellectual powers and loss of faculties, depression of spirits, and tendency to weep at any small excitement, pain in the head and giddiness, pain or prickings, and twitchings of the limbs. These may end in sudden paralysis, as already described. Treatment of such dis order is of course impossible. The person must only be kept quiet, and must receive food easy of digestion, costiveness being guarded against.