During and after confinement is another important time for the employment of vaginal washes. The _lochial discharge_, which is one of the ordinary accompaniments of the newly-delivered woman, is a discharge from the uterus, which continues for several days, growing less and less, for a few weeks, when, in a normally healthy state of affairs, it should cease entirely. The lochia is the oozing from the mouths of the blood-vessels of the womb where the placenta or afterbirth was attached, together with the passing off of the old lining membrane of the womb, while the organ is returning to its original condition. At first the discharge is bloody, and it may retain this character for two or more days after delivery; then the color is changed, partaking more or less of a watery nature and presenting a yellowish hue; it then becomes whitish and ultimately ceases altogether. After the first four or five days the lochial discharge often becomes very offensive; this is a sign of putrescence or decomposition, and the only remedy in this, as in all other similar instances, is to wash the vagina thoroughly with borax water, or with a preparation for which a prescription will be given further on. In every case of delivery, the mouth of the womb is more or less torn or lacerated; this is unavoidable, and it is generally harmless. One of the surgical humbugs is to sew or stitch, or attempt to stitch, these little harmless tears together, not of course for the good it will do the patient, because she is more likely to be injured by this meddlesome surgery, but to make a business and a fee. The common practice of these and kindred surgical expedients is one of the crying evils of an overcrowded profession which is trying to keep itself employed at all hazards. The vagina also receives more or less injury during an ordinary confinement; if the midwife or the doctor is too meddlesome or in too big a hurry to get through, he will use the forceps, which simply means, to pull the child out and through the vagina, before nature has had time to dilate or stretch the parts sufficiently, to allow the child to pass through the maternal organs without injuring them. As a result of this brutal haste, frightful lacerations are incurred, which require immediate attention, but small lacerations heal without any further treatment than to keep clean. After every confinement there is considerable sore or raw surface, with which the offensive discharge comes in contact, to become readily absorbed or taken up into the system, giving rise to fevers or inflammations of the womb and other pelvic organs. If one has a wound on any part of the body, the first thought would, or rather should, be to keep it clean; exactly the same treatment is required for wounds of the womb and vagina.