Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 19, 2025
From obliging the nurse to take certain precautions at its birth, the State follows the newcomer through life, sees that he is vaccinated, removes his tonsils and adenoids, furnishes him with glasses if he has bad vision, compels him to school, prepares him not only for citizenship but for a trade or profession, prevents the adulteration of his food, inspects his milk, filters his water, stands by grocer and butcher and weighs his bread and meat for him, cleans the street for him, stations a policeman at his door, transports his letters of business or affection, furnishes him with seeds, gives augur of the weather, wind, and temperature, cares for him if he is helpless, feeds him if he is starving, shelters him if he is homeless, nurses him in sickness, says a word over him if he dies friendless, buries him in its potter's field, and closes his account as a vital statistic in the mortality column.
In the natural disease the stomach seems to be frequently primarily affected, either alone or along with the tonsils, as the matter seems to be only diffused in the air, and by being mixed with the saliva, or mucus of the tonsils, to be swallowed into the stomach.
And this, of course, is only one of a score of ways in which the leucocytes literally pro patria moriuntur. Our whole alimentary canal is continually patrolled by their squadrons, poured into it by the tonsils above and Peyer's patches below; if it were not for them we should probably be poisoned by the products of our own digestive processes.
By making doctors tradesmen, we compel them to learn the tricks of trade; consequently we find that the fashions of the year include treatments, operations, and particular drugs, as well as hats, sleeves, ballads, and games. Tonsils, vermiform appendices, uvulas, even ovaries are sacrificed because it is the fashion to get them cut out, and because the operations are highly profitable.
=Enlarged Tonsils.= I have said that quinsey or acute inflammation of the tonsils is unusual in early childhood; but a sort of chronic inflammation of those glands which leads to their very considerable enlargement is far from uncommon; and is sometimes the cause of very serious discomfort.
The best known members of this small group are the openings through the abdominal wall, which, originally placed at the strongest and safest position in the quadrupedal attitude, are now, in the erect attitude, at the weakest and most dangerous, and furnish opportunity for those serious and sometimes fatal escapes of portions of the intestines which we call hernia; the tonsils; and our friend the appendix vermiformis.
Diabetic coma; uræmia. Status lymphaticus. This is a general hyperplastic condition of the lymphatic structures in the body, and is seen in enlargement of tonsils, thymus, spleen, as well as of Peyer's patches and mesenteric glands. It is a frequent cause of death during chloroform anæsthesia for slight operations in young people.
Equally harmful is suppression by means of the surgeon's knife. It may be a quicker and apparently more effective process to remove the inflamed appendix or the diseased tonsils than to cure them by building up the blood and inducing elimination of systemic poisons by natural methods. But operative treatment is not eliminative.
If the tonsils are enlarged they should not be removed at the same time, as, by so doing, there is a risk of pyogenic infection from the throat being carried to the wound in the neck, but they should be removed, after an interval, to prevent relapse of disease in the glands.
In cases where the question is doubtful, its decision must turn on whether the tonsils have often been inflamed. So long as their surface is smooth, and their substance soft and elastic, delay is permissible. When their substance is hard, like gristle, and their surface uneven and corrugated, they have undergone such changes that absorption is impossible, and their removal absolutely necessary.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking