ness and redness at the top of the head are first noticed, and
then a little crust forms there which is firmly adherent, and is,
therefore, often not entirely removed as it should be, and thus bit by
bit the mischief extends until its cure becomes tedious and troublesome.
When either from neglect, or from the ailment having set in acutely, the
affection of the scalp is severe, the child's state is one of much
suffering. The whole of the scalp becomes hot and swollen, and covered
over a large surface by a thick dirty crust, through cracks in which a
thick ill-smelling greenish-yellow matter exudes on pressure. At
different points around, pimples form with mattery heads,--pustules they
are called--while the glands on each side of the neck become swollen and
tender. When thus severe on the head it will be found also not merely on
the face, but also on the body, and the poor suffering child is not only
a miserable object to look upon, but, worn by constant restlessness, it
loses flesh, and seems almost as though it could not long survive.
Happily, however, the condition scarcely ever terminates fatally, though
feeble health and stunted growth are not seldom the results of the early
suffering. But besides, severe eczema in infancy always returns again
and again in childhood and in after-life, and there is also a distinct
connection between liability to eczema and to asthma; and this not
simply nor mainly that the disappearance of an attack of eczema may be
succeeded by an attack of asthma, but that the child who in infancy has
had severe general eczema is more prone than another to develop a
disposition to asthma as he attains the age of five or six, and this
even though he should not have had any return of the skin affection in a
severe form.

It is evident then, that one cannot take too much pains to guard
against the occurrence of eczema if possible, and at any rate to prevent
its becoming severe. The disposition to it is often controlled by very
simple precautions, such as bathing the face, the moment the skin shows
any redness or roughness, with thin gruel or barley water, then
powdering it with starch powder, and when the infant goes out, smearing
the spot very lightly with benzoated zinc ointment, and making the child
wear a veil. It will be observed that the exclusion of the air is in all
these cases the object of the application far more than any specific
virtue which it is supposed to possess, and many of the worst