Little has been said hitherto about the wasting which was referred to as one of the characteristics of consumption. When the disease is limited, or nearly so, to the lungs, the wasting is not considerable until the mischief in the chest is far advanced. It must be remembered, however, in order to judge of this, that while in the full-grown man the best sign of health is the persistence for years together of the same weight, the case of the child is different. The child ought to grow in height, and increase in weight, and during these changes the plump infant grows thinner, not by real wasting but by conversion of its fat into bone and muscle. The child is thinner, but is taller and weighs heavier. The only real test therefore of the condition of the child is afforded by its increase in height and in weight. One need not be solicitous about the child who increases in height, and maintains his previous weight, nor about him who while he does not grow yet becomes heavier; but the child who neither gains in weight, nor in height, or who loses weight out of proportion to his increased height, is in a condition that warrants anxiety. I have long been accustomed, in the case of children whose parents were resident in India, to instruct those who have charge of them to send every three months a statement of the height and weight of the children, as the best evidence of their state of health. =Consumptive Disease of the Bowels.=--Consumptive disease sometimes invades the whole system from the very first, while in other instances it attacks from the outset the organs of digestion, and continues throughout to affect them chiefly, and loss of flesh is then one of its earliest symptoms. In instances where there is a strong family predisposition to the disease, consumption of the bowels or mesenteric disease, or disease of the glands of the bowels, all three popular names for the affection, sometimes shows itself at the time of weaning. In the majority of cases, however, it comes on later, after the completion of teething, and between the age of three and ten years. Indigestion such as I have already spoken of sometimes precedes it, with the irregular condition of bowels, and the patchy state of the tongue. But this is by no means constant, scarcely I think general; and not infrequently momentary, causeless, colicky pains precede for a short time any other symptom. In a few weeks after their occurrence, sometimes indeed independently of them, the appetite fails, or becomes capricious; the bowels begin to act irregularly, being alternately constipated and relaxed; and the motions are unnatural in character, being, for the most part, dark, loose, and slimy. Sometimes indeed, they are solid, and then often white, as if from complete inactivity of the liver, and sometimes half-liquid, frothy, and like yeast. One peculiarity which they always present, be their other characters what they may, is their extreme