suaded to swallow on any terms; and if older, it is so scared and pained by its attempts to do so, that it will refuse everything or take it only by main force, to eject it perhaps by the nostrils. Every offer of drink, every display of the medicine- spoon, is the signal for a scene as painful as we are ever called upon to witness, and the medical attendant, not to speak of the mother, may be well excused if he give it up in despair. Hopeless, however, as such cases appear, we must not resign the contest. We have still a resource. Although nourishment cannot be conveyed to the stomach, it can be thrown into the bowel, and injections of concentrated beef tea, with quinine and brandy, will sometimes sustain a life which, had we trusted to the stomach alone, must inevitably have been extinguished.
I have not yet spoken of the auxiliary measures to be adopted, in the shape of local applications to the fauces. These form a very important element in the treatment, and are most valuable, or may be inefficacious or even detrimental, accordingly as they are applied judiciously or otherwise. At the commencement of the present epidemic, lunar caustic, either in substance or in strong solution, was the application almost universally resorted to. Further experience, however, has somewhat diminished confidence in it, and among those who have been most loud in its praises some are to be found who now dispense with it altogether. The solid nitrate, I think, ought never to be used. Applied to the false membrane itself—an extra-vascular formation—it can have no effect, while to the surrounding and subjacent engorged tissues it acts as an escharotic rather than as a stimulant, and produces a slough which may complicate the diagnosis.
