by a lower rate of remuneration.

Need I say that the assumption is a mistaken one--that as much
knowledge, as large experience, are needed in the one case as in the
other; while over and above, to treat children successfully, a special
tact and a special fondness for children are needed? A man may be a very
good doctor without those special gifts; but their possession, apart
from real medical knowledge, may make a good children's nurse, but never
a good children's doctor.

Another matter not to be forgotten is the confidence to be reposed in
the doctor--the readiness to acquiesce in his sometimes visiting the
child more frequently in the course of an illness than the symptoms may
seem to you to require. Were you involved in some civil action, in which
your succession to large property was involved, you would scarcely
expect your solicitor to give you his opinion on all the questions at a
single interview. In the same way, the doctor, even the most
experienced, may need to visit his little patient several times before
he can feel quite certain as to the nature of the disease that is
impending, while he may not wish to alarm you by suggesting all the
possibilities that are present to his mind. The child after a restless
night may be asleep, and it may be most undesirable to wake him; or he
may be excessively cross and unmanageable, so that it is impossible to
listen to his chest; or it may be very important to ascertain whether
the high temperature present in the morning has risen still higher
towards night, or whether, after free action of the bowels, it has
fallen a degree or two, showing that no fever is impending, but that the
undue heat of the body was occasioned by the constipation. Or, again,
some remedy may have been ordered, of the effect of which the doctor
does not feel quite sure: he wishes to see for himself whether it is
right to continue or wiser to suspend it. The wise physician, like the
able general, leaves as little as may be to chance.

Nearly forty years ago, in addressing a class of medical students, I
said to them:

'If you are carefully to observe all the points which I have mentioned,
and to make yourselves thoroughly masters of a case, you must be lavish
of your time; you must be content to turn aside from the direct course
of investigation, which you would pursue uninterruptedly in the adult,
in order to soothe the waywardness of the child, to quiet its fears, or
even to cheat it into good