n and which can be removed by suggestion, we may
correctly speak of a physiological hysteria of childhood, which
includes a very large number of the symptoms discussed. The term is
used here in its older more limited sense.]

(1) A GROUP WITH PERSISTENCE OF CERTAIN INFANTILE CHARACTERISTICS

During the first year or eighteen months of life, the rounded
infantile shape of body persists. The limbs are short and thick, the
cheeks full and rounded, the thorax and pelvis are small, the abdomen
relatively large and full. The great adipose deposit in the
subcutaneous tissue serves as a depot in which water is stored in
large amounts. In the healthy child of normal development by the end
of the second year a great change has taken place. The shape of the
body has become more like that of an adult in miniature. The limbs
have grown longer and slimmer. The thorax and pelvis have developed so
as to produce relatively a diminution in the size of the abdomen. The
body fat is still considerable, but no longer completely obliterates
the bony prominences of the skeleton. Delay in this change, in this
putting aside of the infantile habit of body, is commonly associated
with a corresponding backwardness in the mental development. Such
children walk late, talk late, learn late to feed themselves, to bite,
and to chew effectively. Watery and fat, they carry with them into
later childhood the infantile susceptibility to catarrhal infections
of the lung, bowel, skin, etc., and they are apt to suffer, in
consequence, from a succession of pyrexial attacks. Nasal catarrh,
bronchitis, otitis media, enteritis, eczema, urticaria papulata, are
apt to follow each other in turn, giving rise in many cases to a
persistent enlargement of the corresponding lymphatic glands. The
effect upon the different tissues of the body of these repeated
infections is very various. We are probably not wrong in attributing
the failure to develop and the persistently infantile appearance to a
prejudicial effect upon the various ductless glands in the body. The
condition is associated with an excessive retention of fluid in the
body, secondary in all probability to alterations in the concentration
and distribution of the saline constituents of the body. A rapid
excretion of salts may be followed by a correspondingly speedy
dehydration of the body, a retention of salts by a sudden increase of
weight. The parathyroid glands are probably closely concerned in
regulating th