A TREATISE ON THE ART of MIDWIFERY. SETTING FORTH VARIOUS ABUSES therein, Especially as to the PRACTICE with INSTRUMENTS: THE WHOLE Serving to put all Rational Inquirers in a fair Way of very safely forming their own Judgement upon the QUESTION; Which it is best to employ, In Cases of PREGNANCY and LYING-IN, A MAN-MIDWIFE; OR, A MIDWIFE. By Mrs. ELIZABETH NIHELL, PROFESSED MIDWIFE. LONDON: Printed for A. MORLEY, at Gay’s-Head, near Beaufort Buildings, in the Strand. MDCCLX. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] TO All FATHERS, MOTHERS and likely soon to be EITHER. THOUGH the subject of the following sheets is of such universal importance, that it would be difficult to name that human individual, to whom it does not in some measure relate, you, it doubtless, more immediately concerns. UNDER no protection then so properly as yours can a work be put, not presumingly calculated to determine your judgment, but only to recommend to you the examination of a point, in which Nature would have such just reproaches to make to you, for cruelty to yourselves, if you was indolently to determine yourselves either without an examination, or on a blind implicit confidence in others; in others, perhaps, interested to mislead you. This last advertence of mine will, more than all that I could offer besides, prove to you my sincere unaffected with for your favorable acceptance of this essay of mine, on the footing of absolutely no interest but purely yours. And that interest how dear! how sacred! How indispensably ought it to challenge your preference almost to any other interest of your own, and much more surely to any of others. HAPPILY then for you, in a matter of such common concernment to human-kind, Nature has not been so unjust, nor so unprovident as to place a competent notion of it out of the reach of common sense.