While inflammation and formation of matter in the glands are the popularly known signs of the scrofulous condition, many other organs of the body may be the seat of scrofulous disease. Thus some kinds of inflammation of the eyes are essentially scrofulous; scrofulous diseases of bone and joints are common ; chronic erup tions and ulcers of the skin, discharges from the ear and nose, are also frequently the result of the bad condition of health. Consumption of the lungs or bowels may arise from the same general weakness.
Scrofula is believed to be a manifestation of tubercle, discussed above, and the breaking down and suppuration of glands, the distinc tive feature of scrofula, to be the result of the deposit within the glands of the tuberculous matter.
Treatment.—Nothing so much aids in the progress of a scrofulous tendency as bad food, bad air, want of cleanliness, and the absence of opportunities of healthy exercise, and nothing is so effective in removing the disposition to the disease as the removal of these evils. A scrofulous child should be regularly bathed; it should be clothed in flannel. Plenty of fresh air and sunlight are absolutely pecessary. No thing is, consequently, so valuable as a change from a close town to the sea-coast. Moderate sea-bathing is very useful. If this is not easily available, the child should be bathed at home daily in a bath containing sea- salt, and should be vigorously rubbed afterwards.
Food is to be liberally allowed, especially sweet milk, eggs, soups, &c. Cod-liver oil is the chief medicine, and should be given fora long period, indeed long after health appears quite re-estab lished. Most children learn to like it. Small doses should be given at first, half a tea-spoon. ful twice daily, and the dose should be gradu ally increased till a dessert-spoonful or a table spoonful is being taken thrice daily. To those who, after patient trial, cannot get over the taste of the oil, malt extract or malt extract and cod-liver oil may be given. Another valuable medicine is iron, given as dialysed iron (4 to 10 drops—according to age—five times daily in water), or as syrup iodide of iron (a half to one tea-spoonful thrice daily), or as Parrish's syrup of the phosphates, commonly called chemical food, given in a half to one or two tea-spoonfuls thrice a day. The cod-liver oil and the iron tonic may be given at the same time.
Glands that have become swollen and painful ought not to be rubbed, nor irritated in any way (see p. 284). The oil and the syrup of iodide of iron ought to be persevered with, and the neck simply protected by a strip of flannel. Frequently the affected glands will recover under this treatment if not worried into sup puration. If, however, matter forms in the glands, the sooner a surgeon opens them the better.