One additional remark I have to make with reference to the loss of power, or palsy of various muscles, which frequently follows diphtheria. Almost always there is some impairment of power in the muscles of the throat on which the deposit had taken place, and there is, in consequence, a little difficulty in swallowing for a few days. If this should get worse, food and especially drink sometimes return by the nose, and next there may be a slight squint, and the sight may become weakened, and an uncertain tottering gait; and sometimes for a week or two the child may be unable even to stand. In bad cases there is with these symptoms a general loss of nervous as well as of muscular power, though the child may still be fairly cheerful, and ready to amuse itself as well as it can. This condition may last for many weeks before it passes quite away, and if under the mistaken impression that the limbs will gain strength by exercise, the child is allowed to sit up and encouraged to exert itself, recovery will be delayed much longer; and dangerous weakness or fatal exhaustion may suddenly come on. The inference is too obvious for me to need dwell on it, that repose is the great resource, and quiet waiting the true wisdom. =Hooping-Cough.=--I need not say much about _hooping-cough_, for there is scarcely a nursery in which, to everyone's great discomfort, it is not known as a familiar and most unwelcome visitant. It varies remarkably in its importance, being sometimes so slight as scarcely to amount to an illness, but in other instances one of the most deadly of diseases. It causes the death of a fourth of all children who die under the age of five, and three out of four of these deaths take place in infants of less than two years old. It occurs, however, comparatively seldom during the first three or four months of life, probably because very young children are kept more at home than others, and are thus less exposed to catch it. Though hooping-cough is undoubtedly very contagious, it seems to be communicated only by the breath, and there is absolutely no evidence to show that the clothes of a child suffering from hooping-cough can carry the infection as they might were the child suffering from measles, or smallpox, or scarlet-fever; still less that a person who has visited a room where children are suffering from hooping-cough can convey the disease to another house, or to other children.