This is the day of relative painlessness in labor, and all the world is striving to make childbirth easier and less lethal. No woman, unless she herself requests it, should be permitted to go through the agony of labor without an anæsthetic, judiciously selected and carefully administered. Pain-deadening agents are numerous and inexpensive, and it is only a matter of experience and judgment to choose a method that will reduce the suffering of childbirth to a minimum. The second and first stages of labor, in the order named, demand the most in the way of relief. A prolonged first stage with nagging, violent and apparently useless pains may devitalize the patient more than short, but acute pains of the second stage. In the first stage, under proper selection of cases and experienced supervision, “Twilight Sleep” will be successful in seventy to eighty per cent of the cases. By success, is meant that the patient is relatively free from pain. When the drugs do not relieve pain, the case is a failure (fifteen per cent), although in no case, when properly given, is the mother or child endangered. Morphine solution ⅙ gr. and scopolamine hydrobromid 1/200 gr. to 1/150 gr. is the customary dosage for the first injection. Another injection of 1/200 gr. is given in a half or three-quarters of an hour. The room is darkened, talking is forbidden, and the family exiled. The patient gets red in the face and very thirsty, the pulse is rapid but full. She answers questions very slowly and drowsily, awakes for her contraction but goes right off to sleep again. In this condition she is kept through bi-hourly repetitions of the scopolamine until the delivery. It is this half waking and half sleeping condition that suggested the name of “Twilight Sleep.” Morphine and scopolamine will relieve the pains of the first stage without greatly protracting the labor. The same drugs may and probably will prolong the duration of the second stage. The first dose should be given as soon as the patient is well started in labor. “Twilight Sleep” is at present a hospital procedure, and the technic so exacting as to weary the attendants greatly. It can not be employed until the woman has definitely gone into labor and is at least three hours away from delivery. It is not serviceable where the pains are weak and shallow; and it must be used with wise circumspection, if at all, in the presence of complications. For the second stage, there is a choice of three drugs: gas, chloroform, and ether. Like twilight sleep each is open to some objection, but each may be of the greatest assistance if used under appropriate indications and conditions.