ions, and to that peculiar form of
convulsion called spasmodic croup, concerning which I shall have
something to say later on.

In its less serious form this is both a more frequent and a less grave
condition than consumption, and its existence explains to a great degree
those cases in which young children have failed to be nourished by the
milk food which commonly suits their tender age, but have improved on
beef-tea, raw meat or its juice, and food entirely destitute of
saccharine matter.

In cases where there is reason to apprehend consumptive disease, the
skill and resources of the doctor will often be heavily taxed to meet
each difficulty as it arises. A good wet-nurse, or, in default of her,
asses' milk, with the addition of cream to supply the butter in which
the asses' milk is deficient, a couple of teaspoonfuls of raw meat juice
in the course of every twenty-four hours, much care in the introduction
of farinaceous substances into the diet, and cod-liver oil twice a day,
beginning with ten drops and gradually increasing the dose to a
teaspoonful, are all that the mother herself can do. When the cod-liver
oil is not borne by the stomach, or when--which, however, is not often
the case--the child refuses to take it, glycerine may be substituted for
it, though it must be owned that it is a very poor and inefficient
substitute. The inunction of cod-liver oil is in any case not to be had
recourse to; it makes the child unpleasant to itself and loathsome to
others, while the power of the skin to absorb oily matters is far too
limited to be worth taking into account.

Vomiting, though by no means a prominent symptom of either of the two
very grave conditions of which I have been speaking just now, is yet a
very common attendant on all disorders of digestion in early life. It is
indeed much more frequent in the infant than in the adult, and the
greater irritability of the stomach continues even after the first few
months of existence are past, and does not completely cease during the
early years of childhood. In every case of vomiting in childhood,
therefore, the first question to set at rest is whether it depends on
disorder of the digestive system, or whether it heralds the onset of one
of the eruptive fevers, or of inflammation of the chest, or of affection
of the brain; and in determining this all the directions given when I
was speaking of the general symptoms of disease are to be carefully
studied. Vomiting ofte