A
mother's superintendence, therefore, is much required at this time to
insure a careful attention to the medical directions, as also to those
general points of management upon which the well-doing of her child
much depend, of which the following are the most important:--
VENTILATION OF THE BED-ROOM, ETC.--The child must be kept in bed from
the onset of the attack. He must have so much clothing only as will
secure his comfort, avoiding equally too much heat or exposure to cold.
To these points the parent's attention must be particularly directed.
It is the practice with some nurses, in the belief that a breath of
cool air is most pernicious, to keep the child constantly enveloped in
a smothering heap of bed-clothes, with curtains closely drawn, and the
room well heated by fire, by which means the fever and all its
concomitant dangers are greatly augmented. It is equally a popular
error (and yet by many it is still held and acted upon) to suppose that
because in small-pox exposure to cold is useful, that therefore it
must be of equal advantage in measles. It cannot be too generally known
that the nature of the fevers accompanying the two diseases are widely
different, and that the adoption of this error is productive of the
most serious consequences; for it would most likely produce in measles
inflammation of the lungs, which, in truth, is commonly the result of
carelessness upon this point.
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