=Peritonitis=, or inflammation of the membrane covering the bowels and lining the cavity of the belly, is of excessive rarity in its acute form; and is attended by such general illness and such severe local suffering, that it is impossible to overlook it or to misapprehend its gravity. Severe pain in the belly is sometimes complained of by children, and is due to what is termed colic, a spasm of the bowels which is generally associated with constipation. The great test of the cause of the pain is furnished by the presence or absence of tenderness on pressure. The pain of colic is relieved by gentle pressure and gentle rubbing. The pain of inflammation in any degree and of any kind is aggravated by them. This applies also to cases, not indeed very common, in which inflammation is set up by some small body, such as a cherry-stone getting fixed in a little offshoot or appendage of about the size and length of the little finger, connected with the commencement of the large bowel, and producing ulceration. In these circumstances the bowels are confined, there are nausea and sickness, together with pain and tenderness of the belly, especially on the right side. The disease is a very dangerous one, and often proves fatal in the course of a few days. I refer to it because I have often seen it overlooked both by parents and doctors at its outset, since the pain then is often not severe nor the tenderness intense, and because I have seen the patient's condition rendered hopeless by strong aperients being given to overcome the constipation which was supposed to be all that ailed the child. I repeat then the caution, never to overlook the existence of tenderness, never to attempt to treat a case in which it is present; but always to call in medical advice, and above all always to abstain, unless ordered by a medical man, in every such case from the use of aperients.
=Large Abdomen.=--I must not leave the subject of disorder of the digestive organs without some reference to a condition which often excites much needless anxiety among mothers, namely, the large size of a child's belly. This is sometimes supposed to be a certain evidence of the presence of worms, at other times to be a positive proof of the existence of grave disease, especially of disease of the mesenteric glands, or glands of the bowels as they are popularly termed. It is evidence of neither the one nor the other.