sition
to the frequent return of the attack is often controlled by a series of
small blisters, not larger than a sixpence, behind the ear. As soon as
the tendency has sufficiently abated to admit of it, the ear should be
syringed out twice a day with warm water, or with equal parts of warm
water and Goulard lotion; but if pain or discharge still continues,
medical advice must in all cases be sought for.

=Chronic Water on the Brain.=--There is still another form of
inflammation of the brain, concerning which a few words will suffice. It
constitutes what is termed _chronic water on the brain_, and in this
instance the term is a correct one, for the disease usually depends on a
slow form of inflammation of the lining membrane of the cavities of the
brain, often beginning before, still oftener very soon after, birth,
which ends in the pouring out of a quantity of fluid into them
sufficient to enlarge the head to three or four times its natural
dimensions.

Such cases are very sad and very hopeless, and the great resource, which
is sometimes adopted by medical men, of puncturing the head and letting
out the fluid, is very seldom successful.

But there are more hopeful cases sometimes met with, those namely of
children in whom, either from simple weakness, or from that
constitutional disorder called rickets, bone formation has been
backward, and the head has consequently long remained unclosed. If such
children, either from the irritation of teething, or from the straining
during paroxysms of hooping cough, suffer from congestion of the brain,
fluid may be poured out, which, not being compressed by the too yielding
skull, may in consequence enlarge it. These cases, however, may be
distinguished from the other more serious ones by the date of their
commencement, which is always much later than that of the other form, by
the symptoms which attend them being less severe, and by the enlargement
of the skull being far slighter.

Still they require watching, for while with improved health the
enlargement ceases, the fluid is in a measure absorbed, and the head
diminishes in size, though always remaining larger than the average;
brain mischief is yet more readily set up in children with such
antecedents than in others.

The anxiety of parents about the size or shape of their child's head
after infancy has passed, is perfectly needless. When the head has once
closed it always remains so. An odd shape, with an unusual protubera