n the part of relatives, or still more on the part of
doctors. A chance word from a doctor or nurse off their guard for the
moment will implant in the minds of many such a person the unyielding
conviction that he or she is suffering from some gastric complaint,
from some cardiac affection, or from some constriction of the bowel.
It may take the united force of many doctors to uproot this
pathological doubt which was implanted so easily and so carelessly.
The medical student is notoriously prone to recognise in himself the
symptoms of ailments which he hears discussed. Little children, too,
are apt to suffer in the same way. How much illness could be avoided
if mothers would cease to erect some single manifestation of
insufficient nervous control into a local disorder which becomes an
object of anxiety to the child and to the whole household.

Undue liability to fatigue, irritability, instability, lack of
control over the emotions, extreme suggestibility, prompt and
exaggerated reactions to toxins of all sorts, excessive vasomotor
reactions and anomalies of secretion, weakness of the
gastro-intestinal apparatus--these, and many other symptoms, are of
everyday occurrence in the nervous child. To discuss them more fully
would be to pass too far from our nursery studies into a consideration
of psychological medicine.

CHAPTER XI

NERVOUSNESS AND PHYSIQUE

It has already been said that symptoms of nervousness are often
accompanied by faults in the physical development of the child. The
defects may assume so many forms as to make any attempt at description
very difficult. Nevertheless, certain types of physical defect present
themselves with sufficient frequency, in combination with neurosis, to
merit a detailed description. For example, we recognise a type of
nervous child which is marked by a persistence into later childhood of
certain infantile characteristics of the build and shape of body.
Further, we meet with a group characterised by a special want of tone
in the skeletal muscles, by lordosis, by postural albuminuria, and by
abdominal and intestinal disturbances of various sorts. We recognise
also the rheumatic type of child with a tendency to chorea, and in
contrast to this a type with listlessness, immobility, and katatonia.
Lastly, in a few children, in boys as well as in girls, we may meet
with cases of hysteria.[3]

[Footnote 3: If we accept as hysterical all symptoms which are
produced by suggestio