he pain
then is often not severe nor the tenderness intense, and because I have
seen the patient's condition rendered hopeless by strong aperients being
given to overcome the constipation which was supposed to be all that
ailed the child. I repeat then the caution, never to overlook the
existence of tenderness, never to attempt to treat a case in which it is
present; but always to call in medical advice, and above all always to
abstain, unless ordered by a medical man, in every such case from the
use of aperients.

=Large Abdomen.=--I must not leave the subject of disorder of the
digestive organs without some reference to a condition which often
excites much needless anxiety among mothers, namely, the large size of a
child's belly. This is sometimes supposed to be a certain evidence of
the presence of worms, at other times to be a positive proof of the
existence of grave disease, especially of disease of the mesenteric
glands, or glands of the bowels as they are popularly termed. It is
evidence of neither the one nor the other.

If you go into a gallery of the old masters, and look at any of the
pictures of angels which are generally to be seen there in such
abundance, you will probably be struck in the case of all the child
angels by what will seem to you the undue size of their abdomen. You
will notice this even in the works of painters who, like Raphael, most
idealise their subjects, while in those of others who, like Rubens,
interpret nature more literally, the apparent disproportion becomes
grotesque; or, in the coarser hands of Jordaens, even repulsive.

These painters were, after all, true interpreters of nature. In infancy
and early childhood the abdomen is much larger comparatively than in the
grown person. For this there is a twofold cause; the larger size of the
liver on the one hand, and the smaller development of the hips on the
other. In a weakly child this appearance is exaggerated by its want of
muscular power, which allows the intestines to become much distended
with air. If the child is not merely weakly but also ricketty, the
contracted chest will leave less room than natural for the lungs, while
at the same time the ordinary development of the hips being arrested by
the rickets, the disproportion is further increased both by that and by
the flatulence due to the imperfect digestion with which the condition
is almost always associated.

In no case need the mere size of the abdomen occasion grave a