ucts, and often accompanied with bleeding from the navel. I do
but mention it; the intensity and daily deepening of the jaundice, the
fruitlessness of all treatment, and the grave illness of the child, even
though no bleeding should occur, render it impossible to confound this
hopeless condition with the trivial ailment of which I have been
speaking.

The next chapter will furnish a fitter place than the present for
speaking fully of the Disorders of the Digestive Organs.

I will say now but this: that whatever a mother may do eventually, she
avoids grave perils for herself by suckling her infant for the first
month; while the health of her child, just launched upon the world, is
terribly endangered if fed upon those substitutes for its proper
nutriment on which after the lapse of a few weeks it may subsist, may
even manage to thrive.

There are some local affections incident to the new-born child
concerning which a few words may not be out of place; and first of the

=Ophthalmia of New-born Children.=--It is the cause of the loss of sight
of nine-tenths of all persons who, among the poor, are said to have been
born blind. In the wealthier classes of society it is comparatively
rare, and seldom fails to meet with timely treatment, yet many people
scarcely realise its dangerous character, or the extreme rapidity of its
course.

It generally begins about the third day after birth with swelling of
the lid of one or other eye, though both are soon involved. The eyelids
swell rapidly, and if the affection is let alone, they soon put on the
appearance of two semi-transparent cushions over the eyes. On separating
the lids, which it is often very difficult to do owing to the spasmodic
contraction of the muscles, their inner surface is seen to be enormously
swollen, bright red, like scarlet velvet, bathed in an abundant
yellowish thin secretion, which often squirts out in a jet as the lids
are forcibly separated. Great care must be taken not to allow any of
this fluid to enter the eye of a bystander, nor to touch his own eye
until the fingers have been most carefully washed, since the discharge
is highly contagious, and may produce most dangerous inflammation of the
eyes of any grown person. The discharge being wiped or washed away, the
eye itself may be seen at the bottom of the swelling very red, and its
small vessels very blood-shot. By degrees the surface of the eye assumes
a deeper red, it loses its brightness and its