Sore Throat
Sore
throat is quite common in children. When the tonsils are involved,
it is called tonsilitis; when the larynx is involved, the child's
cough will be croupy--this is named catarrhal croup; and when the
pharynx is involved, it is named pharyngitis. But what is in a name"?
These different names are given to catarrhal sore throat, depending
on the part of the throat involved in the inflammation.
The
cause is gastric (stomach) indigestion, brought on from overeating,
or improper eating; or the eating may not be excessive or particularly
unsuitable, but the child may be enervated from excessive play,
excitement, or anxiety in school work. It is common in children
of low resistance--delicate children, children of neurotic parents--to
have frequent sick spells. They will be sick at the stomach, or
constipated, have a sore throat, or be croupy. Frequently these
nervous children are put to bed apparently as well as usual, but
often awaken during the night coughing, croupy, or vomiting, and
by morning develop quite a sore throat or acute gastritis, vomiting
frequently throughout the day, with more or less fever, pungent
breath, and thirst, which later, if satisfied with water, increases
the vomiting.
Too
great a variety of food is bad for neurotic children. Fresh bread
or cooked breakfast foods are bad forms of starch to feed them;
for their tendency is to eat too fast--they rush such food into
their stomachs without sufficient insalivation. This induces fermentation,
bringing about a continuous acid state of the stomach. If jam, jelly,
syrup, or honey is eaten with the fresh bread, or if sugar and cream
are used on the breakfast mushes, the sweets intensify the fermentation--acidity
of the stomach--building catarrh of the stomach, chronic catarrh
of the throat, enlargement of the tonsils, nasal catarrh, adenoids,
etc. These children have the so-called catching-cold habit, which
in actuality means that they have frequent crises of Toxemia. Such
children are always more or less enervated and toxemic, resulting
in crises such as are explained above with the various names--distinctions
without fundamental differences.
Sugar
and too much butter, and the foods made by combining sugar, cream,
or butter and flour together, are stomach-disturbers. Candy, chocolate,
and sweets cause neurotic children lots of trouble.
Children
who are allowed to eat between meals, except an apple or a like
quantity of some other fresh fruit when they get home from school
in the afternoon, will certainly come to grief sooner or later.
Eating between meals is a pernicious habit, and those who do so
are children whose resistance is so broken, who are so enervated
and toxemic, that they become easy--ready--victims of every so-called
epidemic influence, which should be defined as: Any marked fall
or rise in the temperature of the weather, or continued wet, dry,
cold, or hot weather. Any of these changes adds, so to speak, the
last straw--the last modicum--of enervating influence (to an already
enervated and toxemic body) necessary to create a crisis of Toxemia.
Just what character the crisis will assume, or what organ or organs
will be involved, will depend upon what part of the child's organism
is the most vulnerable. After feast-days or holidays, most children
have been overindulged, and their stomachs rebel at the abuse given
them. Possibly the throat is the most sensitive portion of the mucous
membrane; it may be that the cecum and colon have been rendered
vulnerable because of constipation; or other parts of the mucous
membrane may be the most sensitive. The crises--the so-called diseases--will
take place at whatever point (organ or tissue) has the least resistance.
This
is the reason why so large a number of children in a populous center,
and their so-called disease, are so similar that it has given rise
to the superstition named epidemics of colds, "flu," angina
(sore-throat type), eruptive fevers, etc., etc. This is why the
medical mind works overtime in perfecting its superstitions, such
as contagion, germ influence, quarantine, vaccination, immunization,
and, neither last nor least, fear, which when once started, adds
the most potential influence for breaking down the community's last
remaining resistance.
So
solid is the superstition built about epidemics, contagion, and
vaccination that it presents a veritable Gibraltar against the walls
of which rationalism makes little progress.
No
one is susceptible to the physical changes of environment, however
extreme they are, to the extent of going down with the first contingent
who fall before a so-called epidemic influence, unless he is enervated
and toxemic. This is true of children also. Sharp physical changes
enervate these already enervated beyond their resistance. A monotonous
state of heat, cold, wet, or dry further enervates the enervated
and forces them into a crisis of Toxemia. Parents who would have
their children escape the so-called epidemics should build their
children's resistance when they are well by giving them proper care
before they get sick.
If
this is neglected, and the children get sick with sore throat or
any other so-called disease, stop all food and wash out the bowels
with warm-water enemas, night and morning. Give the child all the
water desired, if there is no nausea or vomiting. Keep something
warm to the feet. If there is any discomfort in the bowels, keep
on a hot pack. Do not disturb the stomach and bowels by giving laxatives.
Why give drugs? Why not get away from the superstition of curing
disease? All that people need when they are sick is to stay in bed,
keep warm, and let food religiously alone until the tongue is clean
and the patient is absolutely comfortable. Break the fast by giving
orange juice and water, equal parts, morning, noon, and night for
the first day. If all goes well, the second day give an orange in
the morning, vegetable soup at noon, and a little toasted bread
and butter, eaten dry and followed with a cup of hot water and two
teaspoonfuls of cream, for the evening meal. If all is going well,
regulation meals may be given the next day, holding the child back
so that it will not overeat.