CHIN-COUGH or KINX-COUGH (Pertussis), the Coqueluche of the French, is a disease to which children are liable, characterized by the presence of a strangulating convulsive cough, interspersed with a peculiar crowing sound or whoop, which cough returns at uncertain intervals in fits or paroxysms that usually pass off by vomiting. The disease appears to be contagious, and usually occurs but once during life; but if the child should within a year or so be afflicted with a bronchitic attack, the attending cough is very liable to assume a form resembling the convulsive paroxysms of this disease.

Hooping-cough begins exactly like a common cold, being usually attended with slight febrile symptoms and a cough. The true character of the malady may, however, be suspected if it is observed that the fits of coughing are most frequent and of longest duration during the night. It is not, however, till the cough has continued from a fortnight to three weeks that it assumes the true convulsive character, comes on in irresistible fits, and is attended with that peculiar prolonged crowing inspiration which characterizes the disease. The fits usually end in vomiting, or in the expectoration of a small quantity of mucous secretion.

Hooping-cough is a dangerous and fatal malady, and the more so the younger the child is. In its simple form it rarely proves fatal, but it is liable to three dangerous complications, to one or other of which the fatal result is usually attributable. These complications are,—1st, with bronchitis or pneumonia; 2d, with hydrocephalus and convulsions; and 3d, with infantile remittent fever. Pathology has as yet thrown no light on the nature of the disease.

In the simple form of the malady little treatment is necessary. Keeping the child in a warm equable temperature, attending to the state of the bowels, and giving, if requisite, some simple expectorant mixture, more with the view of favouring the termination of the fit by vomiting than with the view of checking the disease, is in general all that is necessary. When the hoop is fairly formed, change of scene and air in general causes the malady rapidly to subside. In many cases where the fits are severe, and the child delicate, much benefit is derived from the addition of quinine to the expectorant mixture. The effects of external application are, to say the least, doubtful. When the cases are complicated, they require the greatest attention to bring them to a successful issue, and all the usual means must be sedulously employed which are used in the treatment of each different complication. (J.S.—X.)