There is no drug, including as a drug, beer and other alcoholic beverages, which is at once efficient and free from contraindications, as a galactagogue.

The only true galactagogue is good, nourishing food, including milk, not so much because it is milk, as because it is, on the whole, easily digested and assimilated and because it furnishes approximately the right proportion of solids and water needed in the secretion of the mammary glands.

It is scarcely necessary to state that ingested milk is not directly utilized in the formation of secreted milk.

Eggs, cereals, moderate quantities of meats and vegetables, fruits, sugar-containing foods; in short, a very liberal ordinary diet, restricted only with regard to definitely harmful ingredients, is appropriate to the nursing mother.

Most drugs having a systemic action are excreted to a greater or less degree through the milk. Strong tea, coffee and chocolate must be considered as drugs. Thus, unless there is special indication to medicate the suckling, as with laxatives, iodids, mercury etc., all drugs should be given with great caution during lactation. In cases in which it is absolutely necessary to administer opium alkaloids, atropine, bromids, or, in fact, any "strong" drug having an action on the nervous system, nursing should usually be discontinued and the child should be nourished artificiallv. If the medication is probably of short duration, the breasts should be regularly pumped out, to preserve their function. At least twenty-four and preferably forty-eight hours should be allowed for elimination, after medication has been suspended. The same rule applies in cases of accidental poisoning.

All foods containing appreciable quantities of volatile substances such as onions, garlic, or of hypnotic substances, such as lettuce, hops, and hence, beer, or which tend to produce alimentary putrefaction, as tainted meats, or fermentation as coarse, fodder vegetables, or which contain notable quantities of oxalates, ben-zoates, purin bodies etc., should be discontinued or used in very small quantities during lactation.

It must not be forgotten that excessive physical strain, excitement and hence, social dissipation, is liable to interfere either with the general nutrition of the mother or with the functions of the breasts. Engagements which conflict with the times of nursing should be canceled and only urgent demand for recreation or important business should excuse the disgusting custom of nursing in public or the infliction of a small baby on public gatherings, to say nothing of the excitement and exposure of the child itself.