Besides the morning sickness, the period of pregnancy is often attended with another distressing symptom, described as a sinking at the pit of the stomach: the patient complains, to use a common expression, that she feels _all gone_. This feeling I have often relieved by the free use of soda water. Another remedy which I have often used, and which is by no means disagreeable, is a fresh egg, beaten up with a tumbler of milk, and sweetened. Footnote 22: The _Red_ mixture, prepared by suspending equal parts of pulverized rhubarb and magnesia in mint water, is a favorite prescription with many. Footnote 23: In these cases medicine is not always necessary. Much benefit may be derived from the use of a laxative diet. Brown bread, mush, or hasty pudding made from rye or Indian meal, and eaten with molasses, the free use of the dried laxative fruits, as figs, dates, stewed prunes, and our native fruits when ripe, will often enable the patient to dispense with medicine. Footnote 24: Mild lavements or enemata are here highly serviceable. Where the excrementitious matter is hardened or compacted, the distension of the bowels by from a quart to three pints of starch water, followed by weak soap suds, is a very efficient remedy. Footnote 25: In many parts of New England, the moccasin root is much used to allay the motions of the child. One tumblerful of the infusion of this root is the usual quantity. Footnote 26: This decoction is made by taking four ounces of poppy-heads, breaking them up, putting them into a vessel, pouring upon them four pints of boiling water, boiling the whole for fifteen minutes, and then straining off the liquor. Footnote 27: There are one or two complaints to which the pregnant female is subject, upon which a few remarks seem advisable. Speaking of headache, Mr. Fox remarks:— “Headache, independent of accidents, may be a sympathetic affection arising from disorders of the digestive, or other organs. It may be the consequence of a feeble, or disturbed state of the nervous system: or it may be the effect of the vessels of the head being distended with too much blood; or even of a deficiency of blood in the head. “Where headache arises from a disordered condition of the digestive organs there will generally be an inactive, or irritable, state of the stomach or bowels, which will frequently be accompanied by giddiness, imperfect vision, or by specks floating a short distance from the eyes, by loss of appetite, sickness, acidity of the contents of the stomach, and by flatulence.