ce
abates. The first shock may kill the child in a few hours, or it may
sink under the subsequent diarrh[oe]a, but as a rule recovery eventually
takes place.

All cases, indeed, are not equally severe, but all require careful and
gentle treatment, the cool and darkened room, the quiet, the cold to the
head, the tepid bath, and on the part of everyone the care not to allow
the apparently serious condition of the child to urge them to those
active measures which will here be out of place, and destroy the hopes
which would revive after a few hours of patience and gentle means.

Really acute inflammation of the brain is of so rare occurrence except
as the result of accident or injury, and its symptoms are of so serious
a character, even from the first, that medical advice is obviously
needed at once. I shall, therefore, pass it over here, and endeavour to
describe two forms of inflammation of the brain which are much more
frequent, and at their commencement more likely to be overlooked.

=Water on the Brain.=--One of these is the form of inflammation commonly
known as _water on the brain_, a term which, though incorrect medically,
has the advantage of being well understood. This, now, is not a simple
disease, occurring in a previously healthy child, but it is a disease
dependent on the same state of constitution as gives rise in other
children to consumption, or scrofula, or disease of the mesenteric
glands.

It is this circumstance which renders the disease so serious, and
recovery from it so extremely rare. This it is also which makes it so
desirable to become acquainted with its symptoms, both that you may be
alive to the approach of danger, and also not indulge in needless alarm
when brain symptoms occur from other causes which have no relation
whatever to those which give rise to water on the brain.

The disease comparatively seldom comes on in a child who had previously
seemed in perfect health; a state of vague ailing usually precedes its
outbreak. The child loses flesh and strength, and the look of health,
and the lustre of the eye, and the silky softness of the hair. The
appetite becomes uncertain, the bowels irregular, with a tendency to
constipation; there are little feverish attacks for a few hours,
subsiding of their own accord. The sleep is not sound, the temper
uncertain, the child tires even of its favourite toys; the brightness of
the little face is changed for a strange, weird, wistful look--an
unnat