rty or indigestible meal, may suddenly raise the temperature as
high as 102 deg., or higher, but the needed repose or the action of a
purgative may be followed in a few hours by an almost equally sudden
decline of the heat to the natural standard.

It is well to learn to count the pulse and the frequency of the
breathing; but to do the former accurately, requires practice such as is
hardly gained except by hospital training; and indeed, with few
exceptions, the value of the information furnished by the pulse is less
in the child than in the adult. The reasons for this are obvious, since
the rapidity of the circulation varies under the slightest causes, and
the very constraint of holding the sick child's hand makes it struggle,
and its efforts raise the frequency of the heart-beats by ten or twenty
in the minute. The place at which to seek the beat of the pulse is at
the wrist, just inside and below the protuberance of the wrist-bone; but
if the child is very fat it is often difficult to detect it. When
detected it is not easy to count it in early infancy, for during the
first year of life the heart beats between 120 and 130 in the minute,
diminishing between that age and five years to 100, and gradually
sinking to 90 at twelve years old. In proportion, moreover, to the
tender age of the child, is the rapidity of its circulation apt to vary
under the influence of slight causes, while both its frequency and that
of the breathing are about a third less during sleep than in the waking
state.

The frequency of the breathing is less difficult to ascertain, while at
the same time it furnishes more reliable information than the pulse.
This is best tested when the child is asleep, remembering always that
the breathing is then slower than in the waking state. The open hand,
well warmed, should be laid flat and gently over the child's night-dress
on the lower part of the chest and the pit of the stomach. Each heaving
of the chest, which marks a fresh breath being taken, may be counted,
and the information thus obtained is very valuable. Up to the age of two
years the child breathes from 30 to 40 times in a minute, and this
frequency gradually declines to from 25 to 30 till the age of twelve,
and then settles down to from 20 to 25 as in the grown person. You would
thus know that a sleeping infant who was breathing more than 30 times,
or a child of five who breathes more than 25 times, has some ailment in
its chest, and that the do