I have warned, and I repeat the warning, against exaggerated expectations as to the results of even the wisest treatment. To teach cleanliness, order, and neatness; to impart knowledge enough to enable the idiot to take care of himself; to develop his affections; to enable him to read and write; to practise some easy handicraft; to partake of some simple pleasures, and so at length to return to the shelter of his own home, and to be there, not an object to be hidden away, too painful to look upon, but an object rather of special tenderness, repaying with his guileless love the sad self-sacrifice of his parents for many a year; these are endeavours almost sure of accomplishment in a well-conducted institution, sure never to be realised in a home. I have often sent afflicted parents, who shrank from parting with their children, to one institution near London; and I doubt not there are others in England, where pains, and care, and skill, and untiring love awake the slumbering intellect, arouse the dormant affections, and work miracles of healing on these helpless little ones. INDEX. Abdomen, large, its importance exaggerated, 158 ---- tenderness of, very important, 158 Acute constitutional diseases, 187 Aperients, 23 Artificial feeding, its dangers, 45 ---- ---- rules for, 50 ---- ---- sometimes necessary, 49, 58 ---- ---- substitutes for milk, 59 Asses' milk best substitute for human, 51 Asthma, 145 Atrophy, infantile, 45 ---- its causes and symptoms, 47 ---- symptoms essentially different from consumption, 48, 62 ---- may depend on consumption, 61 Backwardness, 224 Bath, warm, management of, 19 ---- ---- when to be used in convulsions, 91 Bed, importance of, in illness, 16 Bedsores, how to prevent, and treat, 18 Bedstead, best form of, for children, 17 Brain, disease of, cry in, 5 ---- ---- proofs of absence of, 10 ---- and nervous system, mortality from diseases of, 88 ---- ---- convulsions as a sign of, 89 ---- congestion of, 95 ---- disorder of, from exhaustion, 106 ---- inflammation of, 99. _See_ Water on the Brain. ---- disease from disease of the ear, 102 ---- ---- symptoms of, 103 ---- ---- treatment of, 105 Breathing, frequency of, in health and disease, 8 Bright's disease of the kidneys, 169 Bronchitis, 130 ---- more serious than pneumonia, 131 ---- its symptoms, 131 Catarrh, 128 ---- its prevention and treatment, 129 Chafing, 77 Chest, cry in disease of, 5 Chicken-pox, 202 Childhood, characters of second period of, 85 ---- mental and moral faculties, peculiarities in, 213 ---- difference between child and adult, 213 ---- patience of child, 214 ---- vividness of imagination, 215 ---- phantasms and sounds, 216 ---- sensibility intense, 217 ---- craving for sympathy in, 218