he health of the child
for the whole period of its life.

NERVOUS OR PERSISTENT COUGH

Cough in an infant or growing child is usually the result of a cold and
the structure affected is some part of the nose, throat or bronchi. It
is a comparatively simple matter to discover just where the trouble is
and to prescribe the appropriate remedy and effect a cure.

There is another type of cough, however, that is of quite a different
character. This cough will begin as an ordinary cough and it
will only be discovered that it is not an ordinary cough because nothing
will apparently cure it. We mean that the child is given cough remedies
that usually cure a cold, is kept in the house and carefully watched for
a sufficiently long period to justify a cure, and yet, despite this care
and attention, the cough remains the same. The child is not sick, the
appetite is good, there is no fever, it plays and seems to enjoy good
health, yet for weeks and frequently for months the annoying cough hangs
on. It is as a rule worse at night. It begins soon after the child falls
asleep and spoils the entire night's rest or a great part of it. It may
be a dry, hard, hacking cough, or a croupy, harsh bark. It may come in
spells with a considerable interval between them, during which time the
child falls asleep, or it may be almost constant, not quite severe
enough to rouse the child, but bad enough to spoil the child's rest and
the rest of the mother. If this condition lasts for a long time, as it
occasionally does, the health of the little patient is apt to suffer
from loss of sleep.

Treatment.--These children should be taken to a good physician and
thoroughly examined. Special care should be devoted to investigating the
condition of the nose, throat, ear, stomach, heart, and lungs.

A very large majority of these coughs are caused by adenoid growths in
the back part of the nose. The child may not look like an adenoid child,
nor may it breathe through its mouth when asleep, and it may have had
its adenoids removed, yet in spite of these contra-indications it may
have enough loose adenoid tissue in its nose to cause this kind of
persistent cough. This has been proved many times.

It is not only useless but positively harmful to give these children
cough remedies. The cause of the cough must be found and treated. The
cough may be indirectly caused by anemia (poor blood) or heart or
stomach trouble, or it may have a number of other causes. W