How Would Pnuemonia In A Small Child Have Been Treated In The Late 1940S?

[sandyRoe]

?

[Tilly2]

Mustard baths? Cold flannels? Broth drinks. I don't know Sandy. That's a good question.

[sandyRoe]

The child survived so whatever the treatment was it must have been effective.

[Tilly2]

I don't know how old you are, sandy but were you the child?

[Buenchico]

Penicillin was widely used, simply because it was still the only freely-available antibiotic.

[sandyRoe]

Yes it was me.

[Sqad]

The child would have been given aspirin to bring down the temperature, a cough linctus for the cough and either penicillin or sulphonamides or a combination of both for the infection.

I assume that this is a bacterial pneumonia.

[starone]

Penicillin was then on the scene. I had pneumonia 1949 and was being treated with M and B tablets. Then it went on to my 'other' lung and the doctor decided to treat it with 'this new drug' which was penicillin. To put it clearly, I would have died without it. So a small child could have been treated with either depending on the doctor.

[tonyav]

Bet sqad would know.

[tonyav]

Blimey.

[starone]

p.s. I was actually 22 but the same thing would have happened. I survived too sandy, so no doubt you had penicillin, same as me.

[sandyRoe]

M+B deserve our heartfelt thanks, Starone. :-)

[Sqad]

A more interesting question would be how was pneumonia treated before antibiotics....say in the 1930's or before.

Sudden onset of cough, temperature chills, perhaps even unconsciousness and this was whilst the body was fighting the infection. This would last for just over a week until the CRISIS....the child either recovered or died.

It was that simple.

[Sqad]

If the child had tuberculous pneumonia in the late 1940's ir would invariably have been fatal.

Streptomycin and P.A.S were available around 1949...the only defense against TB.

[Peter Pedant]

My turn ! My turn !
M and B May and Baker. I thought it was M&B 693 which if you goggle you will get some results including a series on the tmt of...pneumonia.

penicillin - my father was shown the Lancet paper in 1941 by - a German guard. He was in a POW camp and the problems over availability are well known (it wasnt) but would have been used in general practice by the late 1940s.

If it was a one off - your doctor might have got another GP in for a second opinion. Something like the first case of measles or polio would be widely discussed as the consequences were so dire. Making a diagnosis even if there is no effective treatment, you can see may still be important.

Fluids by mouth, kiddie aspirin, keep warm, fire in the bedroom might have been advised. When my sister got pneumonia at this very time, they did not admit to hospital on the excellent grounds that there was nothing more to be done. Oxygen therapy was experimental. Home oxygen not for another forty years. Drips in kids were unheard of, for another twenty years.

My brother remembers looking over the bars of the cot and seeing a blue child. Another member of the family may have come to help your mother nurse. After a few days, My parents employed someone in the village to come in and nurse at night - basically her function beside sitting by the bed with low light was to wake my parents and tell them the child was dead - actually she survived.

oh goodness those were the days !

[woofgang]

No one has mentioned steam kettles or pneumonia jackets.

[starone]

I have read somewhere (as usual can't remember where) that during wars great strides are made not only in war machines but also in medicine and that penecillin was developed to treat the many injured and ill men. It was not generally available until after the war. This may or may not be true but sounds feasible to me.

[Caran]

I had pneumonia three times under the age of five. I was born in 1942. I originally started school at three but because of this I had to leave and start again at five and a half. I can vaguely remember having my cot brought downstairs to be near the fire. Don't know what treatments I had but have always had a dicky chest. Now have COPD.

[anneasquith]

kaolin poultice,

[sandyRoe]

^ That doesn't seem too far removed from medicinal leeches or blood letting.

[flicrat]

My youngest sister had pneumonia in the winter of 1945, when she was three. I was eight, so don't know about drugs, but she was in bed and had to have the small gas fire on, but the window wide open. I can still see my mother sitting on a cane chair reading to her, wrapped up in her fur coat and fox fur stole!The doctor came tweice a day. Must have been expensive.