d is different. The child ought to grow in height,
and increase in weight, and during these changes the plump infant grows
thinner, not by real wasting but by conversion of its fat into bone and
muscle. The child is thinner, but is taller and weighs heavier. The only
real test therefore of the condition of the child is afforded by its
increase in height and in weight. One need not be solicitous about the
child who increases in height, and maintains his previous weight, nor
about him who while he does not grow yet becomes heavier; but the child
who neither gains in weight, nor in height, or who loses weight out of
proportion to his increased height, is in a condition that warrants
anxiety. I have long been accustomed, in the case of children whose
parents were resident in India, to instruct those who have charge of
them to send every three months a statement of the height and weight of
the children, as the best evidence of their state of health.

=Consumptive Disease of the Bowels.=--Consumptive disease sometimes
invades the whole system from the very first, while in other instances
it attacks from the outset the organs of digestion, and continues
throughout to affect them chiefly, and loss of flesh is then one of its
earliest symptoms. In instances where there is a strong family
predisposition to the disease, consumption of the bowels or mesenteric
disease, or disease of the glands of the bowels, all three popular names
for the affection, sometimes shows itself at the time of weaning. In the
majority of cases, however, it comes on later, after the completion of
teething, and between the age of three and ten years. Indigestion such
as I have already spoken of sometimes precedes it, with the irregular
condition of bowels, and the patchy state of the tongue. But this is by
no means constant, scarcely I think general; and not infrequently
momentary, causeless, colicky pains precede for a short time any other
symptom. In a few weeks after their occurrence, sometimes indeed
independently of them, the appetite fails, or becomes capricious; the
bowels begin to act irregularly, being alternately constipated and
relaxed; and the motions are unnatural in character, being, for the most
part, dark, loose, and slimy. Sometimes indeed, they are solid, and then
often white, as if from complete inactivity of the liver, and sometimes
half-liquid, frothy, and like yeast. One peculiarity which they always
present, be their other characters