though in every respect healthy. The peculiarity is especially apt to be observed when one of the parents-notably the father-has the same characteristic. In order to indicate disease, the deformity must be marked and combined with a widely open, bulging fontanelle, or with indications of impaired brain activity. Depression of the fontanelle shows general debility and the need of food or stimulants. The accompanying diagram, Fig. 1, will aid in explaining this subject.

Great distention of the abdomen is usually due to an accumulation of gas in the intestines, and indicates disease of this portion of the digestive tract; marked depression, on the other hand, is encountered in serious brain affections, in cholera infantum, inflammation of the intestines and dysentery.

3. Development.—To be robust the newly-born infant must have a certain average length and weight. The length varies between sixteen and twenty-two inches, and the weight between six and eight pounds.

From the first day, growth or increase in length and weight, steadily progresses, according to certain definitely fixed rules.

Length increases most rapidly during the first week of life; afterward the progress is almost uniform up to the fifth month, and then it becomes less

rapid, though still uniform, until the end of the twelfth month.

These facts may be seen in the following table :

During the second year the increase is from three to five inches; in the third from two to three and a half inches; in the fourth from two to three inches, and from this age up to the sixteenth year the average annual gain is from one and two-thirds to two inches.

In the first three days of life there is always a

loss of weight, but by the seventh day the babe should have regained weight and be as heavy as at birth. The period of most rapid gain in this respect is during the first five months of life. The maximum is attained during the second month, when the increase is from four to seven ounces each week. Throughout the next three months the increase amounts to about five ounces per week, and in the remaining months of the first year, from two to five ounces.

The subjoined table shows the average rate of gain :

From the first to the tenth year there should be a yearly gain of at least four or five pounds, and after, to the sixteenth year, of about eight pounds in the same period.

Parents frequently over-estimate the weight of their children by placing them upon the scales when completely dressed. To be accurate, the weight of the clothing must be subtracted. This may be estimated at about three pounds for a child of three to five years, four pounds for one of eight years, and eight pounds at fifteen years.

Another reliable evidence of the proper progress of development is the increase in the girth of the chest. Taking an infant weighing seven pounds and measuring nineteen and a half inches at birth, this should be a little over thirteen inches. By the fourth month it should be increased to fifteen inches; by the sixth, to sixteen; by the twelfth, to about seventeen; by the fifth year to twenty-one, and by the sixteenth year to thirty.

As already mentioned, the proportions of the different members of the frame in infancy differ materially from those of adolescence.

Primarily the head and secondarily the body are large when compared with the arms and legs, but in the progress of healthy development this disproportion is gradually lessened until the perfect human figure is attained. This developmental

process, however, does not affect all parts of the body equally, as may be seen in the accompanying diagram.* (Fig. 2.)

The description is so well put in the journal from which this figure is taken that I cannot do better than quote it word for word.

"The six figures represent the average relative stature of males of the ages of one, five, nine, thirteen, seventeen, and twenty-two years. It will be noticed that the figures all stand on a level plain. The tops of the heads are connected by a dotted line, and

* "Babyhood," Vol. II, page 311. Paper by Leroy M. Yale, M.D.