For further treatment, as there are so many different things that will cause spasms, one should better depend upon medical advice. In closing these brief hints upon diseases of children, I wish to impress upon the parent’s mind the fact that in nine cases out of ten children need no treatment for their ailments. Their natural recuperative power gives them ability to throw off disease in a marvelous manner. Too much care and nursing is quite as harmful as too little. It is ordinarily better to make light of their ailments, and teach them the power of self-resistance to the encroachments of disease. A cheerful, hopeful manner, accompanied by the encouraging word, is quite as helpful in sickness of children as in that of adults. Do not discuss their ailments before them. Avoid hinting that sickness is possible, or anticipating it for them as results of certain conduct. Keep it from your own mind also. Never allow yourself to say: “If you go out in the cold you will get sick.” “Don’t sit by the window you will take cold.” “Now do get out of that draft.” “You must not eat so much. Now, there, not one mouthful more, you will be sick.” “Do put on your overcoat and rubbers.” Now, dear mothers, this may be a new thought to you, but this very caution, born of love and solicitude, creates a _fear_ that may make it possible for your children to be sick. Let a child lead an active, rollicking life in harmony with nature, and in himself will certainly be developed power to resist disease. It is possible to make health contagious. “Cheerily, then, my little man, Live and laugh as boyhood can.” CHAPTER XIX. ABORTION. Abortion or miscarriage is the term applied to the death and expulsion of the fetus previous to six months; after that and before full term it is called premature delivery. The liability to abortion is more frequent at the beginning and during the third month. It is usually preceded by occasional loss of blood, which rarely is excessive at first, but in from three days to three weeks increases in frequency and quantity until it may absolutely amount to hemorrhage. The first symptom in some instances is a violent chill. In such cases soreness, heat and pain are soon located in the pelvis and the flowing may be deferred for a few days. One may have continuous pain, more or less severe, until the embryo is expelled; or it may come up at irregular intervals from day to day for some two or three weeks, there being such complete intermissions that the patient hopes each time that all danger is over, and that gestation may be completed. The danger to the mother is from hemorrhage before the expulsion of the embryo, and from retention of membranes after the fetus is born. These decaying in the uterus, the poison is absorbed into the system and septicæmia is the result.