with the worst effect upon his organs, for alcohol has a greater effect upon cells in proportion to their immaturity." Further, as she points out, "the milk of the alcoholic mother not only contains alcohol, but it is otherwise unsuitable for the infant's nourishment; it does not contain the proper proportions of proteid, sugar, fat, etc., and it is therefore not suited for the building up of a healthy body." It is plain that here we cannot avoid criticism of an almost universal medical practice. Our concern in the present volume is not with children but women; and in dealing with the effects of maternal alcoholism upon childhood, the main intention is being kept in view. As regards the giving of alcohol to the nursing mother, there is no doubt that the child is more seriously in danger than she is. There is no doubt also that, as one has often pointed out, the Children Act which forbids the giving of alcohol to children under five years old is being broken when the nursing mother takes alcohol. I refer to this subject here because only thus can we come to a decision on the question whether the nursing mother owes the taking of alcohol as a duty to her child. She may be a teetotaler; she may fear to take alcohol; and she may be authoritatively told that it is her duty to do so because the quality of her milk will be improved. In such a case she may yield, though often with a wry face; and thus we have the frequent beginning of disasters to which there is no end. The truth is that the medical profession has long erred in this respect. Judgment has gone by superficials. Undoubtedly there is a greater bulk of milk when stout and porter are taken. But everyone knows that ordinary household milk may come from the cow or from the pump. The question is not how much bulk is there, but what does the bulk consist of? Definite chemical evidence, which may be repeated a thousand times, and which is allowed to go unchallenged by the vast host of doctors who are prescribing alcohol for nursing mothers all over the world, shows us that its influence is to increase the bulk of the milk while reducing the amount of its nutritive constituents, and adding to them one which is poisonous. The increase of bulk is easy to explain. Alcohol is exceedingly avid of water. Thus the common experience that alcoholic liquors tend to increase the desire for liquid can readily be explained. Alcohol, leaving the blood, tends to withdraw with itself, if it can, a quantity of water. These two, in the milk, between them maintain the added bulk on account of which alcoholic liquors are so widely ordered for and drunk by nursing mothers throughout the civilized world. The infant mortality is thus contributed to, and many women are urged and deceived by their love for their children into a practice which achieves their own ruin. Doctors look back a hundred years or so and observe the amazing practices of their predecessors. They have record of