d, its eyes turning up under the upper eyelid, or the
pupils suddenly dilating, while the countenance wears an expression of
great anxiety or alarm, and the child either utters a shriek, or
sometimes begins to cry.

When a fit comes on, the muscles of the face twitch, the body is stiff,
immovable, and then in a short time, in a state of twitching motion, the
head and neck are drawn backwards and the limbs violently bent and
stretched. Sometimes these movements are confined to certain muscles or
are limited to one side, and I may add that such cases are of more
importance as far as the state of the brain is concerned than those in
which the convulsions are general. The eye is fixed and does not see;
the fingers may be passed over it without its winking, the pupil is
immovably contracted or dilated; the ear is insensible even to loud
sounds, the pulse is small, very frequent, often too small, and too
frequent even for the skilled doctor to count it; the breathing hurried,
laboured and irregular; the skin bathed in abundant perspiration.

After this condition has lasted for a minute, or ten minutes, or an hour
or more, the convulsions cease; and the child either falls asleep, or
lies for a short time as if it were bewildered, or bursts out crying,
and then returns to its senses, or sinks into a state of stupor, in
which it may either be perfectly motionless, or twitching of some
muscles may still continue; or, lastly, it may, though this seldom
happens, die in the fit.

It seems then, from all that has been said, that convulsions, though one
of the most striking, are by no means one of the most conclusive signs
of brain disease; that they are even more commonly the result of
disorders of the nervous system from causes seated elsewhere, than of
actual disease of what may be termed the great nervous centre.

We may now therefore pass to the examination of these diseases, which
for the purposes of this book may be considered under the two heads of
congestion and inflammation.

I am forced to use these terms in somewhat of a popular sense, for to
attempt in a little book like this to define everything with strict
scientific accuracy would simply confuse and mislead.

CONGESTION OF THE BRAIN.--By _congestion of the brain_ is meant a
condition in which its vessels are overcharged with blood; a condition
which if it exists in an aggravated degree, ends either in the pouring
out of blood on, or into the brain, on the one han