We know, too, that among the mothers, abortion, miscarriages, toxæmias, difficult or impossible labors may be largely prevented through prenatal care; while among babies, the enormously high death rate, during the first month of life from causes which begin to operate before birth, convinces us that we must begin to take care of the baby nine months before he is born, if he is to have the greatest benefits of present available knowledge. Such early care reduces still births and injury during labor; it reduces premature births, which is important, because the nearer the baby goes to term the better his chance of survival and of good health, and prenatal care also increases the prospects of satisfactory breast feeding. Although we know that the ideal is to have all maternity patients supervised and instructed entirely by a physician from the beginning of pregnancy and then delivered in a well conducted hospital, it is scarcely probable that this ideal will ever be realized. There will always be patients who cannot afford to employ a doctor for so long a period; there will always be communities in which hospital provisions do not exist or are inadequate. There will always be expectant mothers whom it would be unwise to remove from home, excepting under pressing conditions, because of the influence exerted by their mere presence in keeping the family group intact. And so on, through a number of deterring conditions which will probably never cease to exist, and which will keep the patient at home. Since patients who are supervised during pregnancy and delivered in hospitals usually recover, the high rate of death and injury, in this country, is to be found among women who are unsupervised before labor and subsequently delivered at home. Accordingly, if this widespread injury is to be reduced, the essentials of the care which is found to be efficacious must be made available for all patients throughout the length and breadth of the land. Prenatal care, clean deliveries, and intelligent motherhood will go far toward solving the problem of a high maternal and infant death rate, and these require not widespread care, alone, but widespread teaching as well—impressing upon women and their families the importance of care and precautions in connection with childbirth. Important as it is for men to study and inform themselves in regard to the problems of finance and cattle raising, for example, it is still more important for both men and women to study and appreciate the problems of expectant and actual motherhood. It is in this teaching that the nurse may be immeasurably helpful, in fact is indispensable, for the carrying of approved care into the home and the general teaching of personal hygiene are inextricably bound up with nursing.