NERVOUS NURSING MOTHERS.--Nervousness, considered not as the product of a diseased condition, but as a temperamental quality, is an unfortunate affliction in some nursing mothers. Let us illustrate just how this characteristic is detrimental to the helpless baby. A mother was instructed to give her baby a half teaspoonful of medicine one-half hour after each feeding. She was told how to give it, and how to hold the baby when giving it. She was also told that the baby would not like it, and would try to eject it from its mouth rather than swallow it, and that when it did swallow it, it would make a little choking noise in its throat, but not to mind these, to go ahead and give it, as the baby could not strangle or choke. It was essential to give the baby this medicine, and hence the physician explicitly instructed her in these details. What was the result? On the following day when the physician called, and found the baby much worse, the mother said: "Oh, doctor! I couldn't give the medicine, the baby wouldn't take it, she nearly strangled to death when I tried to give it." The physician asked for the medicine and placing the baby over his knee, gave it without the slightest trouble, much to the mother's amazement. The servant girl who was a hard-headed, cool, Scotch girl, was instructed and shown how to give the medicine, which she did successfully. The mother was temperamentally nervous, was easily excited and became helpless the moment the baby objected, though she was a strong, robust, healthy woman. Another mother was carefully instructed to drop into the eye of her baby two drops of medicine every four hours. She was told and apparently appreciated the urgent necessity of the medication as her baby's eye [127] was badly infected. She was further told that if she did exactly as shown, the eye would be better in two or three days, and if she did not, the other eye would become infected, and blindness might result. She undertook to carry out the directions faithfully. She absolutely failed, however, to carry out the instructions. Her husband informed the physician on the following day that she became so nervous and excited that she utterly failed to treat the eye once, and when he and a sister offered their assistance she became so unreasonable in her fear that "they might hurt the baby" that it was impossible to do anything with her. Her sister was finally shown how to do it and carried the case through quite successfully. Inasmuch as this book is intended to convey helpful instruction to every mother, the author would suggest to those of this type the necessity of resisting this tendency. It is a matter of will power, just make up your mind not to be silly and if you find that you cannot trust yourself to follow instructions, let someone else do it. When the physician tells you a certain thing must be done, and that no harm can result, do it, and don't imagine all kinds of impossible happenings.