Nancy  Sherwood asked:  what is medline ....

and Nancy,  Happy Spring!  What a nice time for your husband to return.

Medline is a medical data base that allows you to use the headings from Index
Medicus
to search the indexed journals for any of these topics from the past five
years.  At our library anything older than that - back to fifteen years - is
only accesible thorugh their reference staff as a special request.  Depends
on how the library is set up (and funded!)  It is kept up-to-date; only a
month or two behind.   It gives the journal name, year, volume, number and
page numbers for appropriate articles as well as the article's title and the
authors.  Most of the articles' abstracts are also available, but not all.
 You need either to find a connection through the Internet ( I noticed one
was being offered not too long ago) or a tie in with a medical center or
library who has it.  Where I live I can contact the Dartmouth Medical Center
health library Medline service.

You can combine headings. If you use only lactation or breastfeeding you can
get 1500 citations all at once. Quite a contrast from the two or three
articles under breastfeeding or lactation that would be listed 19 years ago!

 Headings I frequently use when I am researching for lecturing on immunology
of bfg are 'human lactation and eg. immunoglobulins';  or 'breastfeeding and
IgA'.  Or 'colostrum and immunities.'   You can put anything in the second
position such as fatty acids, iron, jaundice, diarrhea, rotovirus, ,
lactoferrin, birth, cholesterol, bilirubin, atopy, allergy, acuity,
intelligence.....  Anything that would be appropriately linked.

But sometimes when I'm at the library getting the journals to copy the
articles I get on medline and scan the first 100 or 200 titles under just one
of the main headings - breastfeeding or lactation - because it usually lists
the most recent ones first and then something I'm not searching for at the
time catches my eye and I get that too. That save me from thinking up or
having to take an Index Medicus and looking up topic headings.

 Also, if I am at the library the reference librarians are also the best
source for helping you do a precise search.  For example they taught me to
ask for review articles and a few other things I forget at the moment.  Once
I print out all the articles - sometimes 10 to 30 pages with abstracts I go
back through and put an A next to the ones which are most appropriate to the
topic I am searching, a B next to related ones that I might want to look at
and C if remotely related.  That way when I look for the actual articles it's
easier to pick out the most important first.

Mardrey