more than one occasion, we have known the child suck at the finger of the medical attendant when the head had only just cleared the os externum. It has been, and even still is, a very general practice not to apply the child to the breast until the second or third day, upon the plea that there is no milk: a more erroneous and mischievous plan of treatment could not be devised, for it is a fruitful source of much injury as well of suffering both to the mother and her child. The child should be put to the breast, "whether there be signs of milk or not." (White, _on Lying-in Women_.) There is always more or less thin watery fluid called _colostrum_ which is admirably adapted to form the first nourishment of the infant; it is slightly purgative, and, therefore, well fitted to unload the bowels of the viscid green mucus, called _meconium_, which fills them. The colostrum has been variously described by authors; some speak of it as a thin watery fluid, others as a thick creamy milk: this difference depends in great measure upon the interval between the birth of the child and its application to the breast: where this has taken place early, as we have just recommended, the colostrum has almost always the thin watery appearance above mentioned; whereas, if some period of time has been allowed to pass before the child is applied, the breast begins to secrete a fluid containing a larger proportion of caseous matter, or, in other words a more perfect milk, which not being drawn off, the watery part of it is absorbed, leaving the thicker portion to be removed by the process of sucking. Instead of giving the child this bland and natural fluid when in a state best fitted for its delicate digestive organs, it is but too frequently the practice to make it swallow some soft sugar, or a tea-spoonful of castor oil, and follow this up with a little gruel. The effects of such treatment upon a stomach which has never yet received food may be easily imagined; the digestive function becomes deranged, pain is excited, acid is secreted, gas is disengaged, flatulence, diarrhoea, &c. are the result, with all those manifestations of gastric irritation, such as strophulus, aphthæ, colic, &c. from which new-born children are made to suffer so severely.