If the flooding does not stop with these simple means, external applications must be made, of cold, wet cloths, or even ice, over the abdomen, and inside the thighs. Finally, if further treatment is still needed, cold astringent injections may be carefully thrown into the vagina. Cold water is perhaps as good as anything for this purpose, and I have frequently known a most severe flooding checked immediately by injecting cold water into the vagina and rectum, and applying cold wet cloths over the abdomen, and inside the thighs. Some astringent drink may also assist, such as a little syrup of comfrey, or extract of Rhatany, and particularly a tea made of the root of the black currant, as recommended in my "Diseases of Woman."--[A handful of the root may be boiled in two quarts of water, for twenty minutes; it should be sweetened to taste and drunk freely. The common blackberry, or the dew berry, is also excellent, though not so good as the black currant.]--If the patient be nervous and irritable, or suffer much from pain, an opium pill may be taken, or from ten to twenty drops of laudanum. The general practice in these cases is to _bleed_ freely and _give opium_! And as this practice certainly does succeed in many extreme cases, I should certainly recommend, if the simpler means fail, to resort to it at once. I dislike bleeding very much, in any cases, and here it seems particularly inappropriate; I should therefore say _try almost anything and everything first_, but never obstinately refuse to do it if nothing else succeeds. In some cases a plug or tampon is used, to fill up the vagina. It may be made of a roll of cloth, cotton, or a piece of sponge. This practice, however, is useless in the latter months of pregnancy, and very often fails even at other times. When it succeeds it causes the blood to coagulate, and thus closes up the mouths of the vessels. Quite as often, however, it only keeps it in, and makes it accumulate in the womb till it all rushes away at once; still it may be tried. If the hemorrhages should occur so frequently, or be so excessive, in spite of all treatment, as to endanger the safety of the patient, there is no other resource left to save her life but to produce abortion, because the presence of the fœtus and its appendages is evidently then the irritating cause which keeps up the discharge, and it cannot be expected to stop till the womb is emptied. ABORTION, OR MISCARRIAGE.