t and too great solicitude which surrounds
him. It is a matter of universal experience that excess of care for
only children has a depressing influence which affects their
character, their physical constitution, and their entire vitality. At
all costs we must hide our own anxieties from the child, and we must
treat his illnesses in as matter-of-fact a way as possible.

When illness comes, his daily routine should be interrupted as little
as possible. In dealing with nervous children, it is often better to
lay aside treatment altogether rather than to carry out a variety of
therapeutic procedures which have the effect of concentrating the
child's mind upon his symptoms. When we grown-up people are sick, we
often find a great deal of comfort in submitting ourselves to some
form of treatment. We have great faith, we say, in this remedy or in
that. It is _our_ remedy, a _nostrum_. The physician knows well that
the opportunities which are presented to him of intervening
effectually to cut short the processes of disease by the use of
specific cures are not very numerous, and that often enough the
justification for his prescription is the soothing effect which it
may exercise upon the mind of the patient, who, believing either in
the physician or in his remedy, finds confidence and patience till
recovery ensues. As a rule this form of consolation is denied to
little children. They have no belief in the efficacy of the remedies
which are applied with such vigour and persistence. Indeed, it is not
the child, but his anxious mother, who finds comfort in the thought
that everything possible has been done. Therefore, a prescription must
be written and changed almost daily, the child's chest must be
anointed with oil, and the air of the sick-room made heavy with some
aromatic substance for inhalation, and all this when the disturbance
is of itself unimportant, and owes its severity only to the undue
sensitiveness of the child's nervous system.

The very name of illness should be banished from such nurseries.
Everything should be done to reassure the child and to make light of
his symptoms, and we can keep the most scrupulous watch over his
health without allowing him to perceive at all that our eye is on him.
With older children the evil results of suggestions, unconsciously
conveyed to them by the apprehension of their parents, become very
obvious. The visit of the doctor, to whom in the child's hearing all
the symptoms are relat