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OF DENTITION. 243
The local symptoms we may suppose to be attended with
pain, which appears to be expressed by the child when he is
restless, uneasy, rubs his gums, and puts everything into his
mouth. There is generally inflammation, heat, and swelling
of the Gums, and an increased flow of saliva.
The constitutional, or general constitutional symptoms, are
fever, and universal convulsion. The fever is sometimes slight,
and sometimes violent. It is very remarkable both for its
sudden rise and declension ; so that in the first hour of this
illness the child shall be perfectly cool, and in the second
flushed and burning hot, and in the third temperate again.
The partial or local consequential symptoms are the most
various and complicated ; for the appearance they put on is
in some degree determined by the nature of the parts they
affect ; wherefore they imitate various diseases of the human
body. These symptoms we shall describe in the order of their
most frequent occurrence.
Diarrhoea, costiveness, loss of appetite, eruptions on the
skin, especially on the face and scalp, cough, shortness of
breath, with a kind of convulsed respiration, similar to that
observable in the hooping cough, spasms of particular parts,
either by intervals or continued, an increased secretion of
urine, and sometimes a diminution of that secretion, a dis-
charge of matter from the penis, with difficulty and pain in
making water, imitating exactly a violent gonorrhoea.
The lymphatic glands of the neck are at this time apt to
swell ; and if the child has a strong tendency to the scrofula,
this irritation will promote that disease.
There may be many other symptoms with which we are
not at all acquainted, the patients in general not being able
to express their feelings. Many of the symptoms of this
disease are dangerous, namely, the constitutional ones, and
also those local symptoms which attack a vital part. The
fever, indeed, seldom lasts so long as to be fatal ; but the con-
vulsions, especially when universal, frequently are so. Local
convulsions, if not in a vital part, although often very vio-