MOST of the writers on midwifery often start difficulties where there are really none. They often give us emphatical accounts of a head too large, and a passage too narrow, in which they state them as difficulties that are invincible, when the case is far from being so. When the fœtus presents fair, and is in a good posture, our method of practice is, to advise the patient to remain as quiet a-bed as possible, avoiding every thing that may tend to fatigue her body, or hurry her spirits, to reserve in short her strength as much as possible. With time and patience the head of the fœtus scarcely ever fails of moulding itself to the passage, through a particular providence of Nature, which has so ordered it, that the parietal bones of the head of the fœtus, so flexile as to ride over one another, form a kind of oval figure, which facilitates the issue, and dispose it for making way for itself, through the extrusive pressure of the labor-throws. Mean while nothing should be done to irritate the pains; the membranes should not be unnecessarily or untimely burst, which loses the benefit of the waters. You can hardly, in this case, rely too much on the benevolent efforts of Nature: she is constantly at work for the patient’s delivery. Interruptions sometimes only serve to mar or retard a favorable crisis: but all abrupt force or violence is carefully to be avoided. As to bad postures of children, I shall treat of them in the sequel, and of the means to remedy them. Of DIFFICULT and SEVERE Cases. IF an easy delivery requires nothing of extraordinary assistence; it is not so with a difficult one. All the knowledge, experience, dexterity, strength, prudence, tenderness, charity, and presence of mind, of which a woman is capable, are requisite to accomplish certain laborious deliveries. IT has been, in all times, very well known, that the most natural situation for the fœtus coming into the world, is that, in which the head presents first, it being that which commonly makes way for the rest of the body. Yet this delivery may become difficult, in proportion to the obstacles incident to it: obstacles not always surmountable, without great skill and industry employed in aid of Nature. ON the other hand, when it is felt that the fœtus presents any other part than the head, this position, called preternatural, oftenest occasions the delivery to be more laborious and hard to accomplish, in proportion to the more or less trouble there may be to search and come rightly at the feet.