The English practitioners have frequently been accused by their Continental brethren with being too ready in the use of the perforator; but, with one or two exceptions, the charge is not just, for, as already stated, we are not justified in subjecting an adult and otherwise healthy woman to so much suffering and danger for the sake of a child which, after all, will be probably sacrificed by the severity of the labour.[106] _Operation._ In performing the operation we introduce two or three fingers along the vagina to the presenting part of the foetal head, and carefully guide up the perforator against it: these fingers will not only protect the soft parts from injury, but steady the point so firmly upon the skull, as to enable the other hand to bore through it without difficulty. Having passed the blades up to the shoulders or rests, we dilate the opening, first one way and then the other, to form a crucial incision: we now insert the instrument up to the basis cranii, breaking down the attachments and structure of the brain, and thus enabling it to come away with greater facility. To favour this object still farther, and make the cranial bones collapse more readily, we must pass a long elastic tube through the opening, and by means of a syringe, throw up a powerful stream of water into the cavity of the skull: if this be introduced to the base of it, the water will necessarily drive out the brain before it, so that with every stroke of the piston, a quantity of brain will be expelled nearly equal to that of the water injected.