rangers,
yet when older it will quickly learn the proprieties of behaviour, and
in the meanwhile you profit much by the lesson when illness really
comes.

Sometimes, however, infants who when well will open their mouth and
allow their gums to be felt without difficulty, refuse to do so when
ill; and it is always desirable that the mother or nurse whose duty it
is to tend the sick child constantly, should not frighten it, or lose
its confidence, by doing forcibly that which the doctor who comes
occasionally may yet be quite right in doing. You will, however,
generally get a good view of the mouth and throat in young infants by
gently touching the lips with your finger: the child opens its mouth
instinctively, and then you can run your finger quickly over its tongue,
and drawing it slightly forward perfectly see the condition of the
throat, feel the gums as you withdraw your finger, and notice the
appearance of the tongue. Sometimes it is important to ascertain whether
a tooth which was near coming through has actually pierced the gum, and
yet the child's fretfulness renders it almost impossible to induce it to
open its mouth. If now, while the nurse holds the child in her arms, you
go behind her, you can, unseen and unawares, introduce your finger into
its mouth and ascertain all you wish to know before the little one has
recovered from its surprise.

I have but little to say here about the general signs of brain disease
in infancy and childhood, because they will need minute notice
afterwards. All that I would at present observe is, that you must not at
once conclude that a child's head is seriously affected, because it is
heavy and fretful and passionate, and refuses to be amused. The head, as
we know by our own experience, suffers by sympathy in the course of
almost every ailment, certainly of every acute ailment, at all ages. If
the babe is not sick; if its bowels can be acted on by ordinary means;
if, though drowsy, it can be roused without difficulty; if, though it
may prefer a darkened room, it does not shrink from the light when
admitted gradually; if it has no slight twitchings of its fingers or of
its wrists; if the head, though hot, is not hotter than the rest of the
body; if the large vessels of the neck, or the open part of the head, or
fontanelle as it is termed, in an infant in whom the head is not yet
closed, are not beating violently; and, above all, _if when it cries it
sheds tears_, you may quiet you