present: it is only that the skin is poorly supplied with blood for
the moment. After a little rest in bed, or under the influence of a
new excitement, the colour returns, and the tired look vanishes. If
children of this type are made to stand motionless for any length of
time, and if at the same time there is nothing to attract their
interest or attention--a combination of circumstances which unhappily
is sometimes to be found during early morning prayers at school--the
want of tone in the blood vessels may leave the brain so anaemic that
fainting follows. The first fainting attack is a considerable
misfortune, because the fear of a recurrence is a potent cause of a
repetition. Standing upright with the body at rest and the mind
vacant, the circulation stagnates, the boy's mind is attracted by the
suggestion, he fears that he will faint as he has done before, and he
faints. Schoolmasters are well aware that if one or two boys faint in
chapel and are carried out, the trouble may grow to the proportion of
a veritable epidemic. It is important that this habit of fainting
should be combated not only by general means to improve the tone of
the body and circulation, but also by taking care that the child
understands the nature of the fainting fit, and the part which
association of ideas plays in producing it. Disease of the heart
seldom gives rise to fainting.

The same vasomotor instability which shows itself in the tendency to
syncopal attacks is apparent in many other ways. Sudden sensations of
heat and of flushing, equally sudden attacks of pallor, coldness of
the extremities, abundant perspiration,--raising in the mind of the
anxious mother the fear of consumption,--and excessive diuresis are
common accompaniments. A further group of symptoms is provided by the
extreme sensibility of the digestive apparatus. Dyspepsia,
hyperaesthesia of the intestinal tract, viscero-motor atonies and
spasms, and anomalies of the secretions, whether specific like that of
the gastric juice or indifferent like that of the nasal, pharyngeal,
gastric, and intestinal mucus, are all of common occurrence. Whenever
the nervous child is subjected to any exhausting experience, any
excitement, pleasurable or the reverse, or any undue exertion, whether
mental or physical, one may note the subsequent gastro-intestinal
derangement, including even a coating of the tongue. The slightest
deviation from the usual diet, the most trivial fatigue, a chill of