The care of the baby is differently understood by different persons, and as a result of this difference of opinion I have observed a great many unfortunate consequences. There is no reason why the care of the baby should be resigned to custom and habit for both are often extremely hazardous to the life of the child, and this I will illustrate in the course of my remarks. How often are newly born infants taken into a cold room in which, from the arrangement of the doors, a draft sweeps through whenever a person goes out or comes in? How the child is laid bare in readiness for the ordeal of a thorough cleaning! The child is generally first rubbed with oil and afterwards put into a bath tub or some other vessel of sufficient capacity to drown several babies at once. It is now treated to a soaping process, after which, by means of a cloth indifferently selected, the child is scrubbed with an ambition which would have been laudable if applied to the nurse’s own person, but why this little innocent should be the object of such abuse has been a standing wonder to me from the time I witnessed the first outrage. By the time the nurse gets through bathing the child, it is shivering and blue from cold. I had not been practicing medicine very long before I became appalled by this barbarous procedure, nor had I practiced very long before I was called upon to sign a number of death certificates of infants who contracted colds that resulted in bronchitis, pneumonia and congestion of the lungs, which caused their death. There is no sense in this dousing and soaping of a newborn child, and aside from its danger by undue exposure, it is absolutely useless. But habit is often so thoroughly intrenched that the good judgment which persons exercise in most of their duties may become entirely suspended, when this force of habit has established a custom that is well-nigh universal.