=Diphtheria.=--In _diphtheria_ croup is only one, though the most frequent, and one of the most serious, of the many dangerous symptoms which attend it. The croupal symptoms hardly ever come on quite suddenly, but are almost always preceded for some days by slight feverishness, languor, and restlessness, in spite of which the child still amuses itself; and if too young to express its sensations, the slight degree of sore-throat it experiences is manifested rather by a disinclination to take food than by any obvious difficulty in swallowing. There is no cough, nor any change of voice when the child is awake, but when asleep--and the sleep is generally uneasy--it often breathes with its mouth open, it snores slightly, or there is a little hoarse sound accompanying the breathing owing to a trivial swelling of the throat; while, if sought for, there will generally be found a very little enlargement, and a very little tenderness of the glands at the corner of the lower jaw. The eyes are sometimes tearful, there may be slight running at the nose, and the child is said to have a bad cold with slight sore-throat--the most remarkable feature of the case being generally that the depression of the patient is out of proportion to the severity of the local ailment. If now the throat is examined--and examination of the throat should never be omitted in any case where there is the slightest difficulty of swallowing--nothing may at first be seen but a very little swelling, and some redness of one or other tonsil. In a few hours more, white specks like little bits of curd will be seen first on one tonsil, then on the other, and next these specks will have united to form one continuous layer of a sort of yellowish-white membrane over the palate and tonsils. The examination of the throat, often so difficult when children are ill, is attended with almost none, if while they are well they have been taught the little trick of opening their mouths to show their throat, and of allowing the introduction of a spoon to keep down the tongue, a proceeding which though certainly unpleasant they will almost always readily agree to, like Martha Trapbois, in the 'Fortunes of Nigel,' 'for a consideration.' The deposit on the throat may disappear of its own accord, and not be reproduced, and this even though no treatment has been adopted, and in two or three days the child may be pretty well again, though strength is in general regained less rapidly than might have been expected from the comparative mildness of the attack.