of the bowel.

Care is usually all that is needed to remove, as it is to prevent this
condition. The precautions which I have referred to with regard to
cleanliness must be carefully observed, and moreover, each time even
after passing water, the child should be carefully washed with thin
gruel, or barley water, then dusted abundantly with starch powder, while
the napkin must be thickly greased with zinc ointment. After the first
six or seven months of life the napkin can be almost always dispensed
with, if the child has been brought up in good habits, and in all cases
of chafing, it is much the better way to put no napkin on the child when
in bed, but to lay under it a folded towel, which can be removed, and a
clean one substituted for it as soon as it becomes soiled.

There is a very obstinate form of chafing, with great redness of the
skin, and disposition to crack about the edge of the bowel which depends
on constitutional causes, and calls at once for the interference of the
doctor.

Besides this purely local ailment, there is another skin affection
which is seen over the body generally, and is known popularly by the
name of _red gum_, or in Latin _strophulus_. I mention the Latin name
because I have known persons sometimes, misled by the similarity of
sound, fancy that it had some connection with scrofula. It is met with
less commonly now than formerly, when people were accustomed to keep
infants unduly wrapped up, and to be less careful than most are
now-a-days about washing and bathing. It depends on over-irritation of
the sweat glands of the delicate skin of the infant, the result of which
shows itself in the eruption on the body and face of a number of small
dry pimples sometimes surrounded by a little redness, itching
considerably, and when their top has been rubbed off by scratching
having a little speck of dried blood at their summit.

A rash like this, a sort of _nettle rash_, more blotchy and causing
little lumps on the skin, which in a day or two come and go, sometimes
appears in the intervals between the pimples, sometimes takes their
place, and causes, as they do, much irritation. This nettle rash is
usually dependent on some error of diet, on some acidity of the stomach,
and, on their being corrected soon passes away, leaving the pimples as
they were before, but sometimes being reproduced if the pimples cause
excessive irritation of the tender skin.

The matter of chief importance for a mother to