Croup

Catarrhal Croup is very simple, but very formidable at times, when septic. The simple is quite enough to scare the family and friends, and give the appearance that the child will surely choke to death. But if placed in a hot bath--having the water as hot as it is safe for immersing the baby--and kept there long enough, relief from the difficult breathing will be secured. It will be well to start the bath at about 90 degrees Fahrenheit; then add hot water, and increase the temperature to 101 or 102 degrees, if it appears to be necessary. While getting the bath ready, hot applications should be placed on the throat, and heat to the feet. When the child is relieved, continue the hot applications to the throat and feet. It may be necessary to empty the stomach, using a stomach-tube and warm water.

Give the child no food for twenty-four to forty-eight hours, or until fully relieved--until there is no more croupy sound to the cough. The rule is that catarrhal croup passes away in two or three days. Many children will be quite croupy for one night, and apparently perfectly well afterwards. The cause of catarrhal croup is pronounced indigestion from an excess of starch or carbohydrate foods mixed with milk--breaking the rule I have recently given parents never to combine starch and protein in the same meal.

Septic or Diphtheritic Croup is a disease of a very different nature. It means catarrhal croup intensified by a putrescent state of the intestinal canal. It is the so-called contagious croup. Comparatively few who are exposed develop it. The true cause is that the child has been developing gastro-intestinal indigestion for some time, until the organism is suffering generally from putrescent intestinal infection. This type of croup does not always start with such pronounced or formidable symptoms as ordinary catarrhal croup. The child will have a slight fever and putrescent breath, and a slight croupy cough. Indeed, such children will often show a croupy cough for two or three days and nights before dangerous symptoms show up. On examination, the stethoscope will show a bronchial involvement. When this is true, the writer has never known a case to recover.

All that can be done is to palliate with quite hot applications to the throat, hot baths, perfect quiet--positively no food. The bowels should be washed out thoroughly with an enema. It is said, by those who believe in the antitoxin, that the injections of this so-called cure will save such cases; but the writer's experience has been different; and, inasmuch as he never has seen a case recover, he still is waiting for such a cure to take place.