There are many kinds of soap in use for the purpose of washing clothes, cleansing paint, etc. Then there are not a few advertised as superior for washing the skin. But the fact that water into which soap is rubbed turns white, or becomes sudsy, is sufficient evidence that it contains an alkali, or something having the nature of potash. To use it on the tender skin of infants is but to experiment for the benefit of the dealer, at the expense of the babe. Again, soap is irritating to the more tender surfaces, as the lips and eyelids. If the suds is sucked by the child while the sponge is passed over the face, severe purging may occur. Then if soap gets in the eyes, it is liable to cause sore or inflamed eyes, perhaps for life. I truly believe that more children are afflicted with sore eyes, ears, noses, and heads, whose friends took the precaution to have them washed with “pure baby soap,” than could be counted in a hundred years. The germs of bronchitis, which means cold settled in the air-tubes leading to the lungs,—pneumonia, which means lung fever, indigestion, each or all, can be inducted into the system in the first washing. The male physician, unlike the woman physician, does not always remain long enough to see this important duty properly performed. This may be owing to the fact that, among the poorer classes, two or three women are present who are expected to be experts in baby-washing. But, as a fact, many old women sit around on such occasions who have almost as little knowledge what and how to do, as the babe whose expected advent has called them together. Therefore we cannot too strongly protest against the practice of many physicians,—that of leaving a woman in the hands of an inexperienced person as soon as the navel cord is severed. For it is not at all reasonable to conclude, that because a woman is the mother of many children, she is an expert in the matter of washing and dressing the new-born, or of relieving the various ailments incident upon child-bearing. CHAPTER III. PREPARATIONS FOR CONFINEMENT.