ts; or, perhaps, with
a pale face and cold hands and feet, but with the temperature of the
body as high as 103 deg. or 105 deg.. Here the hot bath at 96 deg. to 98 deg., even
rendered more stimulating by the addition of mustard, and continued for
not more than five minutes, is sometimes of great service, and is
speedily followed by the cessation of the convulsions and the outbreak
of the eruption.

These, too, are the cases in which the use of the wet sheet, as
practised in hydropathic institutions, is sometimes of great benefit,
but I do not advise its employment except under medical advice.

The second condition in which the bath, and here it is the tepid and not
the hot bath--that is to say, the bath at from 87 deg. to 90 deg.--is of
service, is where the child is feverish and restless from over-fatigue
or over-excitement, or from exposure to the sun or to an excessively hot
atmosphere, and convulsions have come on in the course of this ailing.
Here the tepid bath for ten or fifteen minutes, coupled with the
application of cold to the head, will soothe the excitement and prevent
the return of the convulsions.

In neither this case, nor in that in which the hot bath is employed, is
the result of the agent as magical as people sometimes seem to expect.
It is rarely that convulsions cease while a child is actually in the
bath. For the most part the influence of the bath is limited to abating
their severity, shortening their duration, and indisposing to their
return.

The bath, then, is to be used when either a stimulating or a soothing
influence on the surface is likely to be of service, and only then. In
cases where the fits are produced by constipation, by improper food, or
by the irritation of a tooth pressing against the gum, it is idle to use
it, and equally so in instances where many fits have been recurring in
the course of the same day. Where that is the case it must be
self-evident that, be the cause what it may, it must be one over which
either a hot or a tepid bath can have no influence, and that, painful as
it must be to wait a passive spectator, that position is far wiser than
that of a mischievous meddler. It is some consolation, also, to know
that unconsciousness to suffering attends convulsions.

There is one agent, chloroform, which often has a very remarkable
influence in controlling frequently repeated convulsions. It is an
agent, however, too hazardous to be trusted out of medical hands, and
ev