servation, and how significant to the wise physician are trifles
seemingly light as air.

If you notice a girl of fourteen or sixteen, who, in walking, always
gives one arm in preference to the other to her companion; if, in
sleeping, she mostly lies on the same side; if, in sitting, she is apt
to prefer a chair with a low back, and throws one arm over its back; if
you perceive that she always sits with one foot a little in advance of
the other; if she, on inquiry, confesses to slight, wandering pains in
one side of her chest,--do not chide her for awkwardness. These are
ominous portents. They mean _spinal disease_, than which a more fearful
malady is hardly known to medicine.

Not less stealthy is the approach of disease of the hip-joint, of white
swelling of the knee, of consumption,--all curable if taken in hand at
the very first, all well-nigh hopeless when they have once unmasked
their real features.

Apart from these general dangers, to which those of thoroughly sound
constitutions are not exposed, there are disorders called functional, to
which all are subject.

GREEN SICKNESS.

When we speak of the 'green sickness,' we mention perhaps the most
common of all, and one of which every mother has heard. Doctors call it
_chlorosis_, which also means _greenness_; for one of its most common
and peculiar symptoms is a pale complexion with a greenish tinge.

It never occurs except at or near the age of puberty, and was long
supposed to be merely an impoverishment of the blood. Now, however, we
have learned that it is a disease of the nervous system, and one very
often confounded by physicians with other complaints.

Its attack is insidious. A distaste for exertion and society, a fitful
appetite, low spirits,--these are all the symptoms noticed at first.
Then, one by one, come palpitation of the heart, an unhealthy
complexion, irregularity, dyspepsia, depraved tastes,--such as a desire
to eat slate-pencil dust, chalk, or clay,--vague pains in body and
limbs, a bad temper; until the girl, after several months, is a peevish,
wretched, troublesome invalid.

Then, if a physician is called in, and gives her iron, and tells her
nothing is the matter, or is himself alarmed, and imagines she has heart
disease or consumption, it is a chance if she does not rapidly sink, out
of mere fright and over-much dosing, into some fatal complaint. Let it
be well understood that chlorosis, though often obstinate and obscure,
is alw