Children troubled with constipation will sometimes be taken with
fever and pain in the right iliac fossa and, on examination, a
fullness will be found; the sensitiveness will not be so great but
that an examination can be made and a sausage shaped tumor may be
outlined; of course, the disease will be named appendicitis and this
is enough to scare a whole neighborhood, and the child will be
carted off to a hospital and operated upon for appendicitis.

If the child is left alone, given no food, and ice put on the
sensitive parts if the temperature is 103 degree F., or hot
applications if the temperature is less, the tenderness will
probably go away in two or three days; if it does not, an abscess
will form and empty into the cecum. If the child is fed, and the
tumor manipulated--subjected to unnecessary examinations--the
abscess may be made to burrow down toward the groin, which should be
avoided for it is a very undesirable complication. The first abscess
is typhlitic, the second is perityphlitic. The first may form
without the aid of bruising in the manipulation of repeated
examinations, but the second must be forced by bad management. The
latter abscess, I have reason to believe, is the former abscess
driven, by repeated manipulations, to burrow downwards instead of
opening into the cocum.

Fecal abscess, arising from ulceration of the colon, may be mistaken
for appendicitis. There is a localized swelling, immovable in
breathing or when pressed upon, and having a tympanitic sound on
percussion over it with dull sound on pressure and heavy stroke.

The symptoms of appendicitis are: Pain in the front, lower, right