r mind on the score of the child's brain,
at any rate until the doctor's visit, and may turn a deaf ear to the
nurse or the friend who assures you that the child is about to have
convulsions or to be attacked by inflammation of the brain.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] The thermometer used for this purpose, called a _clinical_
thermometer, may be bought for about twelve shillings, of any chemist or
instrument-maker, and its mode of employment can be learned in five
minutes. No mother should be without it.

CHAPTER III.

THE GENERAL MANAGEMENT OF DISEASE IN INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD.

The management of the child when ill is difficult or easy in exact
proportion to whether it has been ill or well managed when in health.
The mother who lives but little with her children, who contents herself
with a daily visit to the nursery, and who then scarcely sees her little
ones until they are brought into the drawing-room in the evening in full
dress, to be petted and admired and fondled by the visitors, cannot
expect to take her place by the child's bed in its sickness, to soothe
its pain, and to expend upon it all the pent-up tenderness which, in
spite of the calls of business or of pleasure, still dwells within her
heart. She must be content to see the infant turn from her to the nurse
with whose face it has all its life been familiar; or to hear the little
one tell her to go away, for her presence is associated with none of
those 'familiar acts, made beautiful by love,' which win the young
heart: the mother is but a stranger who brings no help, who relieves no
distress. Happy such a mother if she has found a conscientious and
intelligent nurse to whom she can delegate her office; but she must
remember that with the child, love follows in the steps of daily, hourly
kindnesses, that a mother's part must be played in health if it is to be
undertaken in sickness, that it cannot be laid down and taken up again
at pleasure.

There is another mother who cannot nurse her child to any good purpose,
she who when it was well spoilt it from excess of love, who has yielded
to each wayward wish, and has allowed it to become the petty tyrant of
the household. The child is ill, it is languid, feverish, and in pain;
no position is quite easy to it, no food pleasant to it, bed is irksome,
medicine is nasty. It knows only that it suffers, it has been accustomed
to have its will obeyed in everything, and cannot understand that its
suffering is not at