wer of children is high, and their
recoveries are sometimes surprisingly rapid. It is a mistake, when a
child has completely recovered from an acute but brief illness, to
coddle him for weeks afterward merely because a grown person in similar
circumstances would have failed to regain his strength.

When a child is sick in bed, especial efforts should be made to insure
adequate ventilation without chilling him. Children always lose heat
rapidly because the body surface is proportionately large; when they are
ill, therefore, it is especially necessary to keep them well covered, to
see that their hands and feet are warm, and to avoid chilling them
during their baths. But overheating must also be avoided, since all
children, sick or well, who are too warmly dressed or who stay in rooms
that are too warm, become weak and irritable and more susceptible than
others to colds and other respiratory disorders. The child's skin should
be kept clean and dry, but he should not be disturbed nor handled
unnecessarily.

Sick children require very simple food at short intervals. Variety is
not so necessary for a child as for an adult, unless the child has been
allowed to form bad habits of eating. Sick children should not be
indulged unnecessarily, either in regard to their food or in other ways.
However, attempts made during an illness to change the habits of a badly
trained child are unwise because usually unsuccessful; parents who sow
the wind by neglecting to train their children when they are in good
health may as well make up their minds to reap a veritable whirlwind
when the children are ill. Even when children are well trained it is
difficult and sometimes impossible to prevent them from forming bad
habits during sickness. Yet the labor of training a child reaps perhaps
at no other time a richer reward than it does when the child is ill, and
his recovery might be seriously impeded by unwillingness to accept
necessary food, medicine, or treatment.

PHYSICAL DEFECTS are faults in the structure of the body; adenoid
growths, imperfect eyes, abnormally curved spines, and defective teeth
are examples. Most physical defects can be cured in childhood by
treatment or by slight operations. If untreated they frequently lead to
sickness or to serious impairment of the body, and if neglected until
adult life their injurious consequences are generally beyond remedy,
even when the defects themselves can be repaired.

Some indications of com