This may startle my readers. I, who look so keenly into the future, who am so progressive, so modern and so desirous of the great and rapid evolution of women, to return to the old custom of our grandmothers, and demand, not only the month in bed, to ask even more, that there should be six weeks spent practically lying about all the time! Is this not an anachronism? No. It will be observed that throughout this and my other books, my advice always has a biological basis, depending on the actual structure or the history of our bodies, and there is a very profound and physiological basis for the advice I now give. It is this--that not only during the birth is the whole system of the mother to some extent jarred and shaken; she suffers in all her nerves the sudden relief from the strain upon her muscles and in the whole readjustment of her system an extremely profound shock, and the treatment for shock entails rest. More than that, the womb which lies centrally and is so important an organ in her body, so enormously enlarged during the last months through which the child inhabited it, returns to its permanent size slowly; its strong, muscular walls tensely contract, but this contraction which reduces its size very much in the first day or two does not complete itself, does not bring the tissues back to the size which they will afterwards permanently maintain, _until six weeks have elapsed_. For the whole of six weeks, therefore, the womb will be larger and heavier than normal and with a tendency to get out of place, while all the muscles of the body wall are weakened and out of condition by being so long stretched. A woman, therefore, should not put any strain on her muscles like standing or walking or taking any active exercise before the six weeks has elapsed, though she should, lying both on her back and on her face, do exercises calculated to restore the strength of these muscles and fit them to take on their work directly she rises. One exercise, particularly valuable and but little known, is to raise the diaphragm without breathing. This can be done during the six weeks in bed, but is particularly valuable on first rising and standing or walking. This internal pull upwards of all the organs strengthens both the internal and the outer body wall muscles. Such control deliberately and frequently exerted throughout the day does more perhaps than any one other thing to retain a slender well-formed trunk. It has also a curiously bracing and exhilarating mental effect, and as the action can be done at any time unobserved, its effect can be utilized at will. The ancient Greeks laid great stress on the value of control of the diaphragm.