DISEASES OF OHILDREN. 269 
12, Let these words of divine truth be branded on your 
heart: ‘‘The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is 
eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”—Rom. vi. 23. 
DISEASES OF CHILDREN. 
It is a fact that holds good in beth vegetable and animal 
kingdoms that young life 1s easier destroyed than that which is 
more advanced. Up te a given point our bodies become 
stronger and better able to resist disease ; then beyond this 
point they become more susceptible to it and Jess able to 
resist and throw it off. Soin the first year of human life the 
mortaiity ts very much greater than in after years. This is 
lamentably so in some of our large cities, where the statistics 
show that about one half of the children born die before they 
reach the first year. This very large mortality is brought about 
by the condition of society, which confines the greater portion 
of the population to the narrow streets, lanes and ill- 
ventilated houses in which the poor are often compelled to 
Pass their lives. It is a matter of thankfulness to us that in 
the colomies the poorest are not so unfavourably circum- 
stanced ; still, even here, there is much room for improvement 
in the homes of many in our larger colonial cities. 
In the treatment of children there is one difficulty 
peculiar to those of tender years, they cannot tell us what 
ails them, so that we have to fall back upon our experience of 
the outward manifestations for our diagnosis (or conclusion of 
the trouble), which affects them. Some of these are pretty 
plain, indicating to the eye of experienced mothers the more 
common class of infantile troubles, but there are diseased 
