SORE THROAT

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.