  In these lectures, the status of baryon chiral perturbation theory is
reviewed. Particular emphasis is put on the two--flavor sector and the physics
related to electromagnetic probes. I discuss in some detail the structure of
the effective Lagrangian at next--to--leading order, the meaning of low--energy
theorems in Compton scattering and pion photoproduction and confront the chiral
predictions with the existing data. Some remaining problems and challenges are
outlined.
