Practically anything that is done for children is likely to instil the persuasion that the "whoop" should disappear. Anything impressive will arouse this favorable attitude of mind toward the affection, and hence the remedies have obtained a reputation. In the interior of many countries draughts of sea water are a popular remedy for whooping cough. Sea water, it is said, loses its efficacy if carried long distances from the shore, so the children must be brought to the seaside. In mining regions children are taken down into the mines. The experience is enough of itself, especially when talked over a good deal in the family, and when the occasion is often the first outing that the child has had for months, to bring with it such improvement in health as will enable it to suppress the whoop. If the exposure to the mine air does not bring improvement, it is said to be either because the child was not taken deep enough, or because there was no gas in the air, or the wrong sort of mine was chosen, or some other plausible excuse is advanced. The development of scientific medicine, or at least what we are pleased to think of as more scientific therapeutics than they had in the past, has not kept us from having many and varied remedies for whooping cough, which, after being introduced on apparently good authority and apparently accomplishing many good results, have eventually been allowed to drop into innocuous desuetude. Whenever the administration of any such remedy was accompanied by strong suggestion--when the internal remedies were particularly distasteful, or the inhalations rather trying or at least sure to attract the attention of the sufferers--then good results followed. But the cures were due to the mental influences at work. In recent years various serums, including diphtheria serum, have been tried with reported good results. The giving of the injection is one of those little operations that is likely to impress itself forcibly upon the child's mind, and when given in connection with the promise, implied or explicit, of improvement it is easy to understand that there will be a tendency to lessening the frequency of the whoop, at least during the secondary periods of the disease. CHAPTER III GENUINE REMEDIES AND SUGGESTIVE EXAGGERATION