and mildest measures effect its cure, parents are tempted to
undertake its management in the more severe and complicated forms; and
the result is but too often the establishment of disease dangerous to
life, and sometimes fatal to it.

But although most imprudent for a parent to assume the office of the
physician, her aid is essentially necessary in carrying out the
measures prescribed. By her watchfulness and care the duration of the
disease may not only be abridged, but, what is of much greater
importance, a more serious and aggravated form of disease prevented;
for although hooping-cough in itself is not a dangerous disorder, still
the most simple and slight case, if neglected or mismanaged, may
quickly be converted into one both complicated and dangerous.

DESCRIPTION OF THE DISEASE.--Hooping-cough commences with the symptoms
of a common cold, which is more or less frequent. These symptoms
continue from five days to fifteen; at the end of which time the cough
changes its character, and assumes the convulsive form, which
distinguishes the disorder. It occurs in paroxysms, varying with the
severity of the disease from five to six in the twenty-four hours to
one every ten or fifteen minutes; being generally more severe and
frequent during the night than in the day.

During a paroxysm the expirations are made with such violence, and
repeated in such quick succession, that the child cannot breathe, and
seems in danger of suffocation. The face and neck become swollen and
purple from suffusion; and the eyes prominent, injected, arid full of
tears. The little one, with a forewarning of the attack, which it
dreads, falls on his knees, or clings closely to any thing near him.
The paroxysm terminates with one or two long inspirations, attended
with that peculiar noise, or "whoop," from which the disease has
derived its designation.

Sometimes the fit of coughing is interrupted for a minute or two, so
that a little rest is obtained; and is then succeeded by another fit
of coughing and another hoop, until after a succession of these actions
the paroxysm terminates by vomiting, or a discharge of mucus from the
lungs, or both.

The disease having continued at its height for two or three weeks, it
begins naturally to decline; the paroxysms become less frequent and
violent; the expectoration increases; the cough loses its
characteristic hoop, and gradually wears away altogether; until at
length, in two or three months from t