In The Woman's Voice Clinic: Mumps

In The Woman's Voice Clinic

Translated from the Ladies' Home Journal

Mumps

Until recent years, mumps (the "abu k'ayb") was considered among the least dangerous of children's diseases... confined to swelling and some pain on the two sides of the cheeks, which soon passes; after three days the child rises from his bed, feeling health return and course through his small body, while family and neighbors greet him with the words: "Thank God for your recovery, my darling!" But is it true that this child has escaped the consequences of mumps — or is there an enemy lying in wait for him behind the door?!

Sayings have spread among mothers that mumps may in some cases strike a deadly blow

the disease) between 12 and 26 days, most often 18 days. Doctors do not fix the number of days with certainty, because of the difficulty of ascertaining the date of exposure to the patient.

It is known that a single attack of mumps gives the sufferer lasting immunity. But this rule has its exceptions, and mumps often comes back to visit fathers and mothers following their direct exposure, in spite of their earlier attacks. This, however, is not the usual thing.

The course of the disease, in most cases, requires staying in bed from 10 to 15 days; while the days of fever, swelling, and pain do not exceed five.

Parents must be strictly careful that their stricken children stay in bed even for a week after the swelling has disappeared, so as to ward off any "relapses" that may occur, and that may be harder in their blow and more dangerous than the disease itself.

In rare cases certain other complications occur in those who are past childhood — that is, past the age of puberty — the patient being seized with sharp pain in the head, and inflammation of the brain or of the spinal column; the patient feels a stiffness in his back and his neck, together with a high fever, and then the doctor must be sent for at once.

Fortunately, however, these complications are of slight likelihood, as I have already noted; in most of its cases mumps comes in its natural form, and it is not at all frightening — it only needs care and rest.