That is the point of this entire discussion: The nursing mother must be on a satisfactory diet or she cannot satisfactorily nurse her baby. And by satisfactorily nursing her baby we mean, to give him from the beginning, through her milk, the materials necessary to build well and firmly that temple, in the shape of his body, which he will occupy throughout life; a structure so securely built, from the foundation up through each stage, that it will be able to withstand the attacks of disease and weather the inevitable storm and stress of life. BIBLIOGRAPHY McCollum. The Newer Knowledge of Nutrition, 2nd edition. New York, 1918. McCollum and Simmonds. The American Home Diet, Detroit, 1919. McCollum. Newer Aspects of Nutrition, Proceedings of the Institute of Medicine of Chicago, 1920, iii, 13. Musgrave, W. E. The Philippine Jour. of Science, Series B, vol. 8, 1913, 459. Goldberger, J. Jour. Amer. Med. Assoc., 1916, lxvi, 471. Hess, A. F. and Unger, L. J. Prophylactic Therapy for Rickets in a Negro Community. CHAPTER XVIII COMPLICATIONS OF THE PUERPERIUM The most important of the complications of the puerperium are subinvolution and malpositions of the uterus; breast abscesses; hemorrhage and infection. The importance of these to the nurse lies in their preventability, by means of the clean and efficient care which she helps to give during pregnancy, labor and the early weeks after the baby is born. The nurse’s part in prevention and treatment of subinvolution, malpositions of the uterus and breast abscesses is so bound up in the daily care of the young mother that it was described in the preceding chapter. =Hemorrhage.= Under ordinary conditions, a patient may lose as much as 500 cubic centimetres of blood during or immediately after labor, without serious results, but a loss of 600 cubic centimetres or more is regarded as a hemorrhage and as requiring speedy attention. According to Dr. Williams, severe hemorrhage occurs only once in every few hundred labors, and with proper treatment, should not result fatally in more than one out of every 2000 or 2500 cases. The severe hemorrhage due to a partially separated placenta occurs during the third stage of labor and was discussed in that connection. As the danger of hemorrhage, after labor is completed, is greatest during that critical hour immediately following, it is practically routine the country over to watch the patient closely during this period, both for the sake of preventing bleeding and detecting its early evidence, should hemorrhage occur, thus making prompt treatment possible. The causes of post-partum hemorrhage are: Deep cervical tears, retained portions of the placenta, and atony of the uterus. The treatment of hemorrhage due to tears of the generative tract is suturing the torn edges.