Much apprehension is often needlessly excited in the minds of parents, with reference to any child whose digestion is imperfect, who loses flesh, and has a large abdomen; and the words mesenteric disease, sometimes uttered thoughtlessly by the doctors, seem to them to seal their little one's doom. Now, first of all, it must be remembered that mesenteric disease, due to consumption, plays but a very small part in the production of the symptoms just described, but that the covering and the lining of the bowels are chiefly involved. Next, enlargement of the mesenteric glands and disorder of their functions take place from many causes other than consumption. They are always more or less enlarged in typhoid fever; they become enlarged when irritated by unwholesome food in infancy, or they may swell in the course of chronic indigestion. In all these cases too, the glands in the groin may be enlarged by sympathy, and this without the existence of any actual abiding disease. A big abdomen is, of itself, no evidence of it, nor even when associated with indigestion and frequent stomach-ache; but when to these you add abiding tenderness, and an evening temperature always at least one degree above that in the morning, there is every reason to fear that consumptive disease has attacked the organs of digestion. Even then, however, there is no ground for despair; for, while consumptive disease in any form is less seldom recovered from in childhood than in after-life, such recovery oftener takes place in cases of affection of the digestive organs than when the disease is seated elsewhere. =Scrofula.=--With this word of comfort I leave the subject of consumption, and pass to that of the allied disease _scrofula_. Briefly stated, two of the great differences between it and consumption are that scrofula is almost entirely limited to childhood and youth, while consumption may occur at any age; and next, that while scrofula attacks the bones and the glands, the skin and the membranes adjacent to it, consumption has its seat in the lungs, the brain, and the internal organs. Scrofulous diseases of the bones come so exclusively under the observation of the surgeon, that I do not feel myself competent to say anything about them. I would however warn all parents to be very much alive to the importance of noticing the early symptoms of any such diseases, as shown by slight lameness, complaint of pain in the back, or difficulty in moving the hand or arm, or in turning the head or bending the neck. They may be but temporary accidents, due to cold, or to slight muscular rheumatism, or to some sprain not noticed at the time; but they may also be signs of the commencement of scrofulous disease of some bone; and in no disease whatever is early judicious treatment of greater value, or the result of neglect less remediable.