temperature of the water until it be used quite cold. The skin should, with moderately coarse towels, be quickly but thoroughly dried.

Either the bidet or sitz-bath ought every morning to be used. The patient should first sponge herself, and then finish up by sitting for a few seconds, or while, in the winter, she can count fifty, or while, in the summer, she can count a hundred, in the water. It is better not to be long in it; it is a slight shock that is required, which, where the sitz-bath agrees, is immediately followed by an agreeable glow of the whole body. If she sits in the water for a long time she becomes chilled and tired, and is very likely to catch cold. She ought, until she become accustomed to the cold, to have a dash of warm water added; but the sooner she can use quite cold water the better. While sitting in the bath she should throw either a woolen shawl or a small blanket over her shoulders. She will find the greatest comfort and benefit from adopting the above recommendation. Instead of giving, it will prevent cold, and it will be one of the means of warding off a miscarriage, and of keeping her in good health.

A shower-bath in pregnancy gives too great a shock, and might induce a miscarriage. I should not recommend, for a lady who is pregnant, sea-bathing; nevertheless, if she be delicate, and if she be prone to miscarry, change of air to the coast (provided it be not too far away from home), and inhaling the sea-breezes, may brace her, and ward off the tendency. But although sea-bathing be not desirable, sponging the body with sea-water may be of great service to her."

AIR AND EXERCISE.

A young wife, in her first pregnancy, usually takes toc long walks. This is a common cause of flooding, of miscarriage, and of bearing down of the womb. As soon, therefore, as a lady has the slightest suspicion that she is enceinte, she must be careful in the taking of exercise.

Although long walks are injurious, she ought not to run into an opposite extreme; short, gentle, and frequent walks during the whole period of pregnancy can not be too strongly recommended; indeed, a lady who is enceinte ought to live half her time in the open air. Fresh air and exercise prevent many of the unpleasant symptoms attendant on that state; they keep her in health; they tend to open her bowels; and they relieve that sensation of faintness and depression so common and distressing in early pregnancy.

Exercise, fresh air, and occupation are then essentially necessary in pregnancy. If they be neglected, hard and tedious labors are likely to ensue. One, and an important, reason of the easy and quick labors and rapid "gettings about" of poor women, is the abundance of exercise and of occupation which they are both daily and hourly obliged to get through. Why, many a poor woman thinks but little of a confinement, while a rich one is full of anxiety about the result. Let the rich lady adopt the poor woman's industrious and abstemious habits, and labor need not then be looked forward to, as it frequently now is, either with dread or with apprehension.

Stooping, lifting of heavy weights, and overreaching, ought to be carefully avoided. Running, horse-exercise, and dancing, are likewise dangerous-they frequently induce a miscarriage.

Indolence is most injurious in pregnancy. A lady whe, during the greater part of the day, lolls either on a sofe or on an easy-chair, and who seldom walks out, has a much more lingering and painful labor than one who takes moderate and regular open-air exercise, and who attends to her household duties.

An active life is, then, the principal reason why the wives of the poor have such quick and easy labors, and such good recoveries; why their babies are so rosy, healthy, and strong; notwithstanding the privations and hardships and poverty of the parents.

Bear in mind, then, that a lively, active woman, has an easier and quicker labor, and a finer race of children, than one who is lethargic and indolent. Idleness brings misery, anguish, and suffering in its train, and particularly affects pregnant ladies. Oh, that these words would have due weight, then this book will not have been written in vain. The hardest work in the world is having nothing to do! "Idle people have the most labor;" this is particularly true in pregnancy; a lady will, when labor actually sets in, find to her cost that idleness has given her most labor. "Idleness is the badge of gentry, the oane of body and mind, the nurse of Naughtiness, the step-mother of Discipline, the chief author of all Mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, the cushion upon which the Devil chiefly reposes, and a great cause not only of Melancholy, but of many other diseases; for the mind is naturally active, and if it be not occupied about some honest business, it rushes into Mischief or sinks into Melancholy."

A lady sometimes looks upon pregnancy more as a disease than as a natural process; hence she treats herself as though she were a regular invalid, and, unfortunately,