_After Birth._--In public lying-in hospitals, women usually remain no more than one to two weeks after delivery; they are then discharged, regardless of their condition (physical and mental helplessness, &c.). Those institutions which are connected with a foundling hospital are exceptions in this respect, for some of the women enter the foundling hospital as wet nurses. In the interest of the child it is, above all, necessary that the mother should be well cared for after delivery, for it is during the first three or four weeks after birth that the child is most of all dependent upon the maternal breast. The resumption of work by the mother very soon after delivery, before the resolution of the uterus is completed, and before the abdominal walls have recovered their tone, plays a great part in the causation of the numerous acute and chronic diseases of women. If the woman is sent back into the street almost immediately after delivery, she has no option but to return to work. She must do this, first, because pregnancy and childbirth have exhausted her savings, and, secondly, because she is afraid, if she delays to return, that she will find her place filled. To-day this is becoming generally understood, and institutions are arising in which women can be properly cared for during and after childbirth. Homes for lying-in women and convalescent homes, in which mothers with their children can remain for a considerable time after delivery, subserve this purpose. Quite recently, organisations have been founded for the domestic care of women in childbed--the so-called _Hauspflegevereine_ (Domestic Care Clubs). They send out _Hauspflegerinnen_ (Domestic Assistants), who do the housework of the woman during her confinement, and thus secure for her the necessary rest and quiet. But, unfortunately, in most cases, these associations help married women only. Very little has as yet been done by the State to help women in childbirth. All that communal activity has effected in this direction has been the work of the community at large. Institutions are now being founded, equipped with proper apparatus (incubators, warm chambers, &c.), in which prematurely-born children can be cared for until they acquire the normal powers of resistance of the full-time infant.