The very name of illness should be banished from such nurseries. Everything should be done to reassure the child and to make light of his symptoms, and we can keep the most scrupulous watch over his health without allowing him to perceive at all that our eye is on him. With older children the evil results of suggestions, unconsciously conveyed to them by the apprehension of their parents, become very obvious. The visit of the doctor, to whom in the child's hearing all the symptoms are related, is often followed by an aggravation which is apt to be attributed to his well-meant prescription. The harm done by examinations, which are specially calculated to appeal to the child's imagination, as, for instance, an X-ray examination, is often clearly apparent. I remember a schoolboy of thirteen who was sent to me because he had constantly complained of severe abdominal pain. He was a nervous child with a habit spasm, the son of a highly neurotic father and an overanxious mother. An X-ray examination was made, but showed nothing amiss. The child's interest and preoccupation in the examination was painfully obvious. That night his restraint broke down altogether, and he screamed with pain, declaring that it had become insupportable. Younger children, less imaginative but equally perverse, noticing how anxiously their mothers view their symptoms, will often make complaint merely to attract attention and to excite expressions of pity or condolence. Sometimes they will enforce their will by an appeal to their symptoms. I have had a little patient of no more than thirteen months of age who suffered severely and for a long time from eczema, and who in this way used his affliction to ensure that he got his own way. If he was not given what he wanted immediately he would fall to scratching, with an expression upon his face which could not be mistaken. To him, poor child, the grown-up people around seemed possessed of but one desire--to stop his scratching; and he had learnt that if he showed himself determined to scratch they would give way on every other point.