ase, but at any rate, it is a reprieve which gives
time for remedies to take effect, and at the worst, it substitutes a
comparatively painless death for one of intolerable anguish. It can,
too, be performed under the influence of chloroform, so that the idea
that it adds in any way to the child's distress is unfounded. Who that
has seen the calm, happy face, and watched the tranquil sleep of the
child after the operation, who before was struggling, with distorted
features and agonised countenance, to get a breath of air, but would
feel as I do, that I would have it done in a child of mine for the sake
of a painless death, even though I knew for certain that it would not
prolong life even for an hour?

One additional remark I have to make with reference to the loss of
power, or palsy of various muscles, which frequently follows diphtheria.
Almost always there is some impairment of power in the muscles of the
throat on which the deposit had taken place, and there is, in
consequence, a little difficulty in swallowing for a few days. If this
should get worse, food and especially drink sometimes return by the
nose, and next there may be a slight squint, and the sight may become
weakened, and an uncertain tottering gait; and sometimes for a week or
two the child may be unable even to stand. In bad cases there is with
these symptoms a general loss of nervous as well as of muscular power,
though the child may still be fairly cheerful, and ready to amuse itself
as well as it can. This condition may last for many weeks before it
passes quite away, and if under the mistaken impression that the limbs
will gain strength by exercise, the child is allowed to sit up and
encouraged to exert itself, recovery will be delayed much longer; and
dangerous weakness or fatal exhaustion may suddenly come on.

The inference is too obvious for me to need dwell on it, that repose is
the great resource, and quiet waiting the true wisdom.

=Hooping-Cough.=--I need not say much about _hooping-cough_, for there
is scarcely a nursery in which, to everyone's great discomfort, it is
not known as a familiar and most unwelcome visitant. It varies
remarkably in its importance, being sometimes so slight as scarcely to
amount to an illness, but in other instances one of the most deadly of
diseases. It causes the death of a fourth of all children who die under
the age of five, and three out of four of these deaths take place in
infants of less than two years