ght and safe.

DIARRHOEA.

Some women always suffer from looseness of the bowels during pregnancy;
others are very liable to attacks of it during this period, either
coming on without any assignable cause or easily excited by any slight
indiscretion in eating. In many instances these attacks alternate with
constipation or with morning sickness.

The diarrhoea, if at all severe or prolonged, should not be allowed to go
on unchecked, for it quickly weakens the patient and predisposes her to
abortion. The foetus is especially endangered when the passages are
attended with much bearing-down pain. In some exceptional cases,
however, a slight diarrhoea seems to be beneficial, for every attempt to
remove it appears to do harm; but these instances are very rare.

The _treatment_ required is a simple, and must be a cautious one.
Ordinarily no medicine will be needed. If the patient will merely
confine herself to milk and arrowroot and rice for twenty-four hours a
cure will be effected in mild cases. When it is apparent that the attack
has been caused by improper food, a table-spoonful of castor-oil or a
tea-spoonful or two of tincture of rhubarb will remove the offending
material in the bowels, upon the presence of which the diarrhoea depends.
A small injection of a tea-spoonful of rice water and thirty or forty
drops of laudanum will often speedily arrest the excessive discharges,
and relieve the pain.

CONSTIPATION.

No woman while pregnant should allow several days to elapse without a
movement from the bowels. The symptoms of constipation, slight at the
outset, soon cause great inconvenience. Among the effects, which, sooner
or later, show themselves, may be feverishness, sleeplessness, headache,
distressing dreams, sickness at the stomach, severe bearing-down pains,
and piles.

Medicines are rarely required in the treatment of constipation, and the
pregnant woman should never take an active purgative, excepting under
medical advice. Outdoor exercise and regularity in soliciting nature's
calls, together with a change in the diet, will usually have the desired
effect. Brown bread, wheaten grits, oatmeal gruel, ripe fruits, fresh
vegetables, stewed prunes, or prunes soaked in olive oil, baked apples,
figs, tamarinds, honey, and currant jelly, are all laxative articles
which should be tried.

In some instances a tumbler of cold water drunk the last thing at night,
and another the first thing in the morning, will ac