The choice of a physician should not be delayed until the last moment, but it should be made several months before the expectation of delivery, and a woman should never engage a doctor for her confinement, unless she knows that he has had practical experience in at least ten cases of confinement, for some of our leading medical colleges and all of the poor ones, graduate hundreds of doctors each year who never attended a single case of confinement, and some have, even, never seen one; yet the newly fledged doctors are turned loose upon the unsophisticated communities to attend women in the most trying period of their lives, and at a time when both the experience and science of her physician should be her sheet anchor of hope. A physician who is not always sober, of good moral character, and cleanly in his habits and appearance, should never be allowed in the lying-in chamber, nor one who is prating of the many severe confinements he has attended, or who boastingly speaks of the number of times it was necessary for him to use instruments, for it is quite likely, that the many severe confinements of which he spoke, were either fictitious or due to his ignorance of the subject, and the frequency with which he used instruments was owing to a lack of patience on his part or to a desire to be meddlesome and make himself officious. There are a great many medical gentlemen who are not charlatans in disguise, and these should be singled out. The pregnant female should have herself thoroughly washed and bathed just before confinement, and the vagina should be thoroughly rinsed out with half a gallon of warm water in which a tablespoonful of pulverized borax has been dissolved; this precaution will wash out any infectious germs that may cause inflammation.