hand the percentage of women able to
nurse their children is decreasing. This is especially true as applied
to cities, though it is also true, in a less degree, in the rural
districts. One eminent authority states that less than twenty-five per
cent. of the well-to-do mothers, who have earnestly and intelligently
attempted to nurse their babies, succeed in doing so for a period longer
than three months. This authority also says: "An intellectual city
mother who is able to nurse her child successfully for the entire first
year is almost a phenomenon." Women nowadays have so many diversified
interests, that the primal duty of maternal nursing is not at all a
fashionable function. If, however, the mother is willing, and has
conscientiously tried to nurse her baby, and after seven or eight days
it is found that she has not enough milk to satisfy it, and if the
quality seems to be good, some expedient should be immediately adopted
to tide the condition over until the mother resumes her customary
household routine. The safest expedient under these circumstances is to
alternate the feedings; one feeding from both breasts of the mother, and
the next an artificial food. Some arrangement of this kind is the just
and the safest way, because a very large percentage of mothers suffer
from inactivity while lying in bed after a confinement. This inactivity
expresses itself in a failure of some of the organs to perform their
duty properly. This may affect the quantity, and sometimes the quality,
of the milk, but it is, as a rule, quickly rectified as soon as the
mother is up and active.

If, however, the milk is still found to be inadequate after she is up
and has resumed her usual habits, and if her health is good, and she is
eating well, it is distinctly best to put the child exclusively on an
artificial diet.

CERTAIN CONDITIONS JUSTIFY THE ADOPTION OF ARTIFICIAL FEEDING FROM THE
BEGINNING

1st. Woman suffering with any wasting disease such a cancer or
tuberculosis. (One of these days, and very soon we hope, it will be
legally impossible for a tubercular or cancerous patient to become a
mother.)

2nd. When a mother is the victim of any of the serious childbed
complications such as convulsions, kidney disease, extensive loss of
blood or blood poisoning, or runs a high temperature because of some
disease occurring at the same time as the confinement, as, for example,
appendicitis, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, etc.

3rd. Epi