HERE I shall not offer any digressions on physic, anatomy, chemistry, or pharmacy; I shall confine myself entirely to the points of my business of the manual operation. Let the physician prescribe, the surgeon bleed, the chymist contribute medicines, the apothecary make them up; with none of these professions do I presume to interfere. But as to the man-midwife, who not only so often presumes in some measure to represent them all, but to join to them the exercise of an art so unnatural to his sex, I should think myself wanting to my duty in my profession, if I did not point out the mischief I apprehend to result from especially that method of practice, on which he grounds the pretence of necessity for his practising it at all; and this chiefly forms the object of this second part, in supplement to my first. Of DELIVERIES. WE understand, by deliveries, in general, the issue of the fœtus out of the mother’s womb. THESE are distinguished into two kinds, the one natural, the other preternatural. THE natural one, is that in which the fœtus comes out in the most ordinary way, when it presents the head foremost. IT is deemed preternatural, when the fœtus presents in the passage any other part than the head. THESE two kinds are again subdivided into two distinctions of labor, of easy or difficult, because both the natural and preternatural mode of delivery may be easy or difficult. THE delivery is termed easy when the fœtus comes out readily, and without the aid of art. IT is termed difficult, when the labor of it is hard, and the fœtus does not make its way out but with pain, and with the help and assistent industry of the midwife. IN the cases of a natural and easy delivery, there is little or no actual occasion for the presence of the midwife, beyond that of receiving the fœtus, tying the navel-string, giving the child to be kept warm, and then delivering the mother of the after-birth. The spirits of the patient are then to be recomposed, her agitation calmed, a warm and soft linnen cloth applied to the stomach; a warm shift and bed-gown put on her; a linnen cloth to be laid on four-fold over the belly; a double-napkin round her, and she to be placed in a bed well warmed. Such is the summary of the process to be observed in those common cases. IN the deliveries, on a preternatural labor, when they are easy, the same method takes place: there being no difference, but that in one the child will have been received by the head, in the other by the feet. THESE kinds of labors are so easy, that there is no need of demonstrating their being to be terminated without the aid of instruments. When the fœtus presents itself promisingly, Nature is best left to her own action, and nothing should be precipitated in the manual function, unless some unexpected accident should intervene, and require interposition, such as a great flooding, or other exigency.