uggish condition of the liver, accompanied by very white or pale
evacuations, constipation, and loss of appetite, with a sallow tint of
the skin, and sometimes even with actual _jaundice_, are by no means
uncommon during the first ten years of childhood. Neither condition is
serious; that of actual jaundice occurs mostly in the summer, and is
then connected with the sudden onset of hot weather. When severe, it may
be associated with some degree of feverishness, with dizziness, and
complaint of headache, and occasionally with vomiting, while the child
rests ill at night, or awakes in a state of alarm, and these symptoms
sometimes give rise to the fear that the child is about to be attacked
by water on the brain. But the following consideration may serve to calm
anxiety on that score. The attack is not preceded, as water on the brain
is almost invariably, by several days or even weeks of failing health.
It is not attended by heat of head, nor by intolerance of light, nor by
constant nausea; and the belly is full rather than shrunken. When to
these symptoms are added tenderness on the right side, high-coloured
urine and white evacuations, you may set your mind at rest, even before
the yellow colour of the skin, which appears in a day or two, stamps the
case unmistakably as one of jaundice.

My business is, as I have said more than once, the endeavour to describe
the symptoms of disease, to explain their nature, to indicate the
principles to be observed in attempting their cure, and not to lay down
definite rules for their treatment, with the idle expectation that I
could thus enable every mother to be her children's doctor.

=Diarrh[oe]a.=--I have, therefore, comparatively little to say about
_diarrh[oe]a_ in children, important though it is, for its symptoms
force themselves on the notice even of the least observant. There are,
however, a few points concerning it worth bearing in mind. Before the
commencement of teething, diarrh[oe]a is almost always the result of
premature weaning, or of a diet in some respect or other unsuitable. As
soon as teething begins, the liability to diarrh[oe]a increases greatly,
and cases of it are more than twice as frequent, and twice as fatal,
between the ages of six and eighteen months as they were in the first
six months of life; while, as soon as teething is over, their number
immediately declines again to the half of what it was during the
continuance of that process. The practical concl