people, who have trained a child to know that illness means absolute
indulgence, and who pour out unguardedly their own fears and
expectations at the bedside, the result for the child is in some cases
past belief. The little one gets worse and worse. It accepts
automatically the situation, with all the bribes to do so made larger by
feebleness, and at last gains that extreme belief in its own inability
to rise or move about which absolute convictions of this nature impose
on child or man.

There is a further and worse stage possible. The child's claims
increase. Its complaints gather force, and alarm those about it.
Gratified in all its whims, it develops perverted tastes, or refuses all
food but what it fancies. At last it becomes violent if opposed, and
rules at will a scared circle of over-affectionate relatives. When all
else fails, it exaggerates or invents symptoms, and so goes on, until
some resolute physician sees the truth and opens the eyes of an amazed
family.

Certain physicians explain these cases as due to hysteria, and in a
small number of instances there are signs which justify such an
explanation. But in the larger proportion the mode of origin is complex,
and depends on the coincidence of a variety of evils, none of which are
of hysterical character. I am not here concerned so much with the exact
nature of these troubles as I am with the avoidable errors in the
management of sick childhood. If I can make the mother more thoughtfully
alert, less disposed to terror and exaggeration, less liable to be led
by her emotions, I shall have fulfilled my purpose without such
discussion as is out of place in essays like these.

To make clear, however, the possibility of the disasters I have briefly