the child during the
daytime seeming to suffer only from a slight cold, or now and then, and
so rarely that I have not known it to occur above once or twice in all
my experience, it may end in real inflammation of the windpipe; but not
in diphtheria.

Attacks of this kind may recur three, four, or more times even in
childhood, while diphtheria has no tendency to recur, but like measles
or scarlatina seldom appears more than once, though the rule is subject
to more numerous exceptions than are found in the case of the eruptive
fevers. Still the fact of an attack of this sort returning should of
itself lessen apprehension and make the parents look forward to its
issue with less anxiety than that with which they regarded its first
occurrence.

A fact which shows how large a part is played by disturbance of the
nervous system in these cases is the liability of children who have
suffered from it to attacks of asthma, often of great severity as they
grow older, while very often after the transition from childhood to
youth has passed these attacks too lessen in frequency and severity, and
often altogether cease.

There are two measures which, while waiting for the doctor's arrival,
may at once be taken, and which sometimes remove the symptoms almost as
if by magic, while even were the case one of diphtheria they would still
be of some service, and could not possibly do any harm. They are the hot
bath, and a full dose of ipecacuanha wine. The former should be as hot
as it can be borne, 93 deg. or 94 deg., and the child should be kept in it for
five minutes, and the latter should be given in a full dose, as a
teaspoonful in warm water every quarter of an hour till free vomiting
takes place. How much better soever the child may seem after the use of
these remedies, it should still be kept for two or three days under
careful medical observation.

=Diphtheria.=--In _diphtheria_ croup is only one, though the most
frequent, and one of the most serious, of the many dangerous symptoms
which attend it. The croupal symptoms hardly ever come on quite
suddenly, but are almost always preceded for some days by slight
feverishness, languor, and restlessness, in spite of which the child
still amuses itself; and if too young to express its sensations, the
slight degree of sore-throat it experiences is manifested rather by a
disinclination to take food than by any obvious difficulty in
swallowing. There is no cough, nor any change of voice