The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases. Charles West

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 humour by joining in its play; and you must be ready to do this, not the first time only, but every time that you visit the child, and must try to win its affections in order to cure its disease. If you fail in the former, you will often be foiled in your attempts at the latter. Nor is this all; you must visit your patient very often if the disease is serious in its nature and rapid in its course. New symptoms succeed each other in infancy and childhood with great rapidity; complications occur that call for some change in your treatment, or the vital powers falter suddenly when you least expect it. The issues of life and death often hang on the immediate adoption of a certain plan of treatment, or on its timely discontinuance. Do not wait, therefore, for symptoms of great urgency before you visit a child three or four times a day; but if the disease is one in which changes are likely to take place rapidly, be frequent in your visits as well as watchful in your observation.'

      Each year has added to my conviction of the perfect truth of each word which I have quoted. If you believe your doctor to be a man of integrity and intelligence, be thankful for his frequent visits, which will cease as his anxiety abates. Be convinced that in the mean time they are made, not for his sake, but for yours. If you doubt his integrity, change your doctor; but do not say to him in a tone and with an emphasis which there is no mistaking, 'Well, if you think it really necessary to come'!