Abscess of the breast constitutes a distressing complication of the puerperal condition, inflicting upon the patient intense suffering, and very often leading to a long delay in recovery. It may be due to cold, and in one case it developed from this cause two months before confinement, but this is an exception. Sore nipples are a fruitful cause, for the soreness of nursing makes the mother reluctant to have the child draw all the milk out, hence, the breast cakes and hardens with the above result. It also is due to neglect in not having the nipple properly drawn out; or to a foolish custom, derived from remote ancestry not to allow the infant to be put to the breast for two or three days after its birth. In this way the milk ducts become greatly distended, inflammation sets in, which, if not properly arrested will terminate in an abscess. If gentle friction of camphorated oil and hot, moist compresses or poultices do not enable the child to draw out the secretion, a young pup should be obtained, for he draws with a gentleness and activity which surpasses the most perfect machine. The patient must drink sparingly of fluids and properly support the breasts by means of handkerchiefs placed under them and made to cross the shoulders, and the bowels should be thoroughly opened. Should an abscess form it should be opened by a free incision, and the poultice discontinued, but instead a wad of absorbent cotton should be applied and the breast tightly bandaged with the handkerchief. CHAPTER XXIX. DISEASES PECULIAR TO CHILDREN. THE diseases of children that I propose to inquire into, are not those of so serious a nature as to require the skill of a physician, but rather those trivial ailments which are common among children of tender age and which neither good care nor healthy surroundings seem to be able to ward off. And for this reason, mothers and nurses should familiarize themselves with these ailments and their appropriate treatment, for trivial as they may seem to begin with, if permitted to go on uncontrolled, they often lead to more serious and perhaps fatal consequences. A coated tongue in children is not always a sign of digestive disturbance, for most nurslings have a white coated tongue in the first three or four weeks of their lives. With the ancients, and even up to within a recent period, the tongue was considered the _mirror of the stomach_; this was a delusion because nothing definite or of great importance can be deciphered in any case from the appearance of the tongue alone, but this superstition became so deeply rooted in the minds of the public, that even now a medical examination is considered incomplete unless the physician says _put your tongue out_, for the purpose of a physical inspection.