mastication; regular and sufficient exercise, horse exercise being particularly serviceable; the shower-bath, or daily ablution; early rising (the indulgence in the habit of lying in bed always predisposing to constipation); and, lastly, the patient habituating himself to evacuate the bowels at a certain hour of the day.  After breakfast appears to be the time when the bowels are more disposed to act than at any other part of the day; this is the time, then, that should be chosen.

All these points must be sedulously observed, and upon the principles laid down in the various chapters upon these subjects, if habitual costiveness is expected to be overcome.

SECT.  IV.—­WORMS.

Not so frequent as popularly supposed; an error productive of mischief.—­Almost all diseases have been, at one time or other, attributed to the generation of worms in the intestines.  And at the present day it is not at all an uncommon occurrence for medical men to be called in to prescribe for children, to whom the strongest purgative quack medicines have been previously exhibited by parents, for the removal of symptoms which, upon investigation, are found in no way connected with or produced by worms.  The results of such errors are always, more or less, mischievous, and sometimes of so serious a nature as to lay the foundation of disease which ultimately proves fatal.  This observation, moreover, it behoves a mother carefully to regard, since the symptoms, popularly supposed to indicate the existence of worms, are so deceptive, (and none more so than that which is usually so much depended upon—­the picking of the nose,) that it may be positively asserted to be impossible for an unprofessional person to form a correct and sound opinion in any of these cases.

It was at one time imagined, and the idea is still popularly current, that worms were the occasion of a troublesome and lingering species of fever, which was therefore designated worm-fever.  This notion is now entirely exploded; for if worms be present under such circumstances, it is a mere accidental complication; the fever referred to being generally of a remitting character, and neither caused by or causing the generation of worms.  The symptoms of this fever, however, have led and continue to lead very many astray.  This is not surprising, since they so closely resemble those which characterise the presence of worms, that an unprofessional person is almost sure to be misled by them.  Amongst other symptoms, there is the picking of the nose and lips, offensive breath, occasional vomiting, deranged bowels, pain in the head and belly, with a tumid and swollen condition of the latter, a short dry cough, wasting of the flesh, etc.; symptoms continually attendant upon the disorder now under consideration.  These cases have hitherto been perpetually looked upon by mothers as worm-cases, and after having been treated by them as such, by the use of the popular worm-powders of the day, have, as perpetually, presented themselves to the physician greatly and grievously aggravated by such injudicious treatment.  It is folly, at any time, for an unprofessional person to prescribe for a case where worms are actually known to exist:  surely where there is any doubt upon the latter point it must be greater folly still.