ered with a little cotton; before each nursing, however, it
must be well washed off with warm water or warm boric acid solution.
When the nipples are cracked, the infant's lips should also before
nursing be carefully wiped out with boric acid solution. For the
baby's mouth contains bacteria which while harmless in themselves may
if they get into the cracks of the nipple set up an inflammation of
the breast or "mastitis" and cause an abscess. If the cracks are
excruciatingly painful, as they sometimes are, it is necessary to give
the one breast a rest for twenty-four hours and have the child nurse
at the other until the cracks have partially healed.

=When It Is Necessary to Dry Up the Breasts.= In case of the death of
the child, or if the mother for some other reason finds herself unable
to nurse, such as in cases where there is absolutely no nipple,
instead of the prominence of the nipple there being a deep depression,
it becomes necessary to stop the secretion of the milk, or as it is
said in common parlance, "to dry up the breasts." In former days, not
so very long ago, and the practice is still common enough to call
attention to it and to condemn it, the breasts used to be tightly
bandaged, or they used to be pumped every few hours. The first causes
unnecessary pain and trouble, while the second procedure, the pumping,
does exactly the reverse to what it is intended to do. Instead of
drying up the breasts it keeps up the secretion. The best thing to do
in a case like that is to leave the breasts alone, not to pump them,
but just gently support them with a bandage and then in three or four
days the secretion of the milk will gradually disappear. There is some
discomfort the first twenty-four or forty-eight hours, but if left
alone the discomfort is less than if the breasts are manipulated,
bandaged or pumped.

=Menstruation or Pregnancy While Nursing.= Many women do not
menstruate and do not become pregnant while they are nursing. Some
women will not conceive, no matter how long they may nurse the
child--a year or two or longer. And some women take advantage of this
fact, and in order to avoid another child they will keep up the
nursing as long as possible. In Egypt and other Oriental countries
where our means for the prevention of conception are unknown, it is no
rare sight to see a child three or four years old interrupting his
work or his play and running up to suckle his mother's breast. But not
all women have