tocked with
English and Welsh books, the gifts of various visitors to the house. The
child is thirteen years of age, and is undoubtedly very pretty. Her face
was plump, and her cheeks and lips of a beautiful rosy color. Her eyes
were bright and sparkling, the pupils were very dilated, in a measure
explicable by the fact of the child's head and face being shaded from
the window-light by the projecting side of the cupboard bedstead. There
was that restless movement and frequent looking out at the corners of
the eyes so characteristic of simulative disease. Considering the
lengthened inactivity of the girl, her muscular development was very
good, and the amount of fat layer not inconsiderable. My friend stated
that she looked even better than she did about a twelvemonth ago. There
was a slight perspiration over the surface of the body. The pulse was
perfectly natural, as were also the sounds of the lungs and heart, so
far as I was enabled to make a stethoscopic examination. Having received
permission to do this, I proceeded to make the necessary derangement of
dress, when the girl went off into what the mother called a fainting
fit. This consisted of nothing but a little and momentary hysterical
crying and sobbing. The color never left the lips or cheeks. The pulse
remained of the same power. Consciousness could have been but slightly
diminished, inasmuch as on my then opening the eyelids I perceived a
distinct upward and other movement of the eyeballs. Each percussion
stroke of my examination, and even the pressure of the stethoscope,
produced an expression of pain, which elicited a natural sympathy from
the mother, and an assertion that a continuance of such examination
would bring on further fits. On percussing the region of the stomach, I
most distinctly perceived the sound of gurgling, which we know to be
caused by the admixture of air and fluid in motion. The most positive
assertion of the parents was subsequently made that saving a fortnightly
moistening of her lips with cold water, the child had neither ate nor
drank anything for the last twenty-three months. The whole region of the
belly was tympanitic, and the muscular walls of this cavity were tense
and drum-like--a condition not infrequently concomitant of a well-known
class of nervous disorders. The child's intellectual faculties and
special senses were perfectly healthy. Before her illness she was very
much devoted to religious reading. This devotion has lately