he inflammation is fully established, the pain
will compel the restriction of the child to the well side. The
application of warmth is both grateful to the part and beneficial. This
may be done by means of poultices or fomentations, or by immersing a
wooden bowl in hot water and putting the breast, wrapped in flannel,
within it. This latter means will be found an easy and agreeable one of
keeping up the application of dry heat. The bowels should be briskly
purged by a dose of citrate of magnesia or cream of tartar. The diet
must be mild, and the breasts supported in a sling. If, in spite of all
these efforts, an abscess actually forms, the attending physician will
doubtless advise its immediate opening, to which advice the patient
should accede, as that is the course which will afford her quicker and
more effectual relief than she can hope for from nature's unaided
efforts at effecting a discharge of the pent-up matter.

It is interesting for the mother to know that if her child be
still-born, or if unfortunately she be unable from any of the reasons
mentioned in our chapter on Hindrances to Nursing to give the breast at
all to her child, she is not liable to gathering on this account. This
is contrary to what might be expected. It is not the mother who is
unable to nurse at all who suffers, but she who does so in an
unsatisfactory manner and who fails to have her breasts properly
emptied.

The first milk which makes its appearance in the breast towards recovery
from inflammation is likely to be stringy and thick, and should,
therefore, be rejected before nursing is resumed.

THE SINGLE LIFE.

A few words, ere we pass to another branch of our subject, on the
physical relations of her who by choice or other reasons never marries.
It is a common observation among physicians who have devoted themselves
to the study of woman's physical nature, that, in spite of those perils
of maternity which we have taken no pains to conceal, the health of
single women during the child-bearing period is, as a general rule, not
better, not even so good, as that of their married sisters. Those
insurance companies who take female risks, do not ask any higher premium
for the married than the unmarried.

Various suggestions have been made to account for this unexpected fact.
Some writers have pointed out that in many diseases marriage exerts a
decidedly curative influence, especially in chronic nervous ailments.
Chorea, for instan