nce
of the forehead and the hind head, sometimes remain as the evidence of
that condition in infancy to which I have just referred. It is, however,
an evidence of mischief passed, not of mischief going on. In children
too who have suffered from rickets, an affection rarely met with except
among the poor in crowded cities, distortion of the limbs is often
associated with a peculiar form of the skull, but in this too there is
nothing to call for anxiety, still less to excite alarm. It is only a
preternaturally small head and shelving forehead, which are found
associated with mental deficiency; otherwise the greatest varieties of
size and shape, of symmetry, or of want of it, may be associated with an
equal variety of intellectual endowment, which is just as likely to be
above as below the average.

=Brain Disorder from Exhaustion.=--It may at first sight appear strange
that before leaving the subject of congestion and inflammation of the
brain, I should find it necessary to give a caution against being misled
by symptoms which though in some respects similar to those of congestion
or inflammation, are in reality due to an exactly opposite condition.

This mistake, however, is very possible; doctors themselves sometimes
fall into it, and some distinguished physicians have thought it worth
their while to lay down very minute rules for distinguishing between the
two opposite states. Headache we all know attends an overfull condition
of the vessels of the brain, and grown persons usually suffer from it
severely before an attack of apoplexy; but we also know that bad
headache accompanies states of great weakness, and that it is one of the
most distressing consequences from which a woman suffers who has lost
much blood in her confinement. In just the same way, the infant who has
been exhausted by diarrh[oe]a or by some trying illness, or who after
weaning has been kept on a diet not sufficiently nutritious, may show
symptoms of disorder of the brain.

It may become irritable, restless, very startlish, with occasional
flushings of the face, moaning in its sleep, and sleeping with
half-closed eyes. But the head is not hotter than the rest of the body;
if the head is not closed, the open part or fontanelle is not tense and
pulsating, but flat or even depressed, the hands and feet are cool, and
very readily become cold; there may be occasional vomiting, but nothing
like the constant sickness of real brain-disease, the bowels are