the first few hours or days after birth, the babe wastes as well
as grows weaker and weaker, and this wasting coupled with the difficult
breathing not seldom causes the fear that the child has been born
consumptive and that its death is inevitable.

No such gloomy view need be taken. Collapse, or at least non-expansion
of the lung to some extent, is by no means unusual: consumptive disease
to such an extent in the new-born infant as to interfere with the
establishment of breathing is extremely rare. The consumptive babe can
suck, it is not so weak as the one whose lungs are imperfectly expanded;
it has no convulsive twitchings, nor any of the strange head-symptoms
which we notice in the former. It wastes less rapidly, it is feverish
instead of having a lower temperature than natural, it seems less ill,
and yet its death within a few weeks or months is absolutely certain;
while the child whose lungs are not diseased but simply unexpanded may,
if that accidental condition is removed, grow up to vigorous manhood.

The treatment of these cases is abundantly simple. The child who
breathes imperfectly but ill maintains its heat. It must be kept warm at
a temperature never less than 70 deg.; it may, like the premature child,
need stimulants, and all the precautions already mentioned as to
feeding. Twice in the day it should be put for five minutes in a hot
bath at 100 deg., rendered even more stimulating by the addition of a little
mustard. The back and chest may be rubbed from time to time with a
stimulating liniment, and an emetic of ipecacuanha wine may be given
twice a day. The act of vomiting not only removes any of the mucus which
is apt to accumulate in the larger air tubes, but the powerful
inspirations which follow the effort tend to introduce air into the
smallest vesicles of the lungs, and to do away with their collapse.

Let these directions be carried out sensibly, patiently, perseveringly,
and three times out of four, or oftener still, the mother's ear will
before many days be greeted by the loud cry, with its _cri_ and
_reprise_ of which I have already spoken, and which assures her that her
little one will live.

There are no other affections of the lungs so peculiar to the first
month of life as to call for notice here. I shall have a few
observations to make about malformations of the heart, and the
precautions for which they call in the after-life of children; but they
will find their fittest place in the