HERE be it observed, that by the word “ignorant,” M. De la Motte should not intend the application of it to the midwives of the Hôtel Dieu at Paris, since, by his own confession, it is the best school of midwifery in Europe. Nor certainly is he in the wrong. Be it in honor of truth allowed me to say, that I know of those women who have served their apprenticeship in this hospital, who would think they made a wretched bargain, if they exchanged the manner of operating they learned there, for all the Latin, Greek, Arabic, or the iron and steel instruments of the best man-practitioner in Europe; even though his excellence in the manual function should be thrown into the scale for make-weight. The most constant success justifies their practice. In whatever situation the fœtus has presented, I have seen them, without having recourse to a man-midwife, and consequently to instruments, procure a happy delivery in very difficult labors. I have myself seen one deliver a child that had been dead in the mothers womb for near six weeks, without dismembering it; and though it was half-putrified, and the head so rotten-tender as to have no solid consistence, I dare advance this, without fear of being falsified, since I can name the mother, now alive in London, the witnesses, the place and year. SUCH real midwives as I am here discribing, for I do not mean the spurious nominal ones, only fit to _create_ work for the instrumentarians, or whose cue of interest is to do so, have no reason to apprehend, that in the numbers they have lain, there can be any found, that can complain of having suffered, or of suffering any the least damage or inconvenience, after their lying-in, that might be imputed to ignorance or mispractice. ON the contrary, I dare aver, that such, genuine midwives have cured many women who had received notable injury, before they came under their hands, in their having passed through those of the men-practitioners. Nothing being more agreeable to Nature, to Reason, to Experience, than that the method of practice of a skilful midwife is not only the most easy and gentle, the least painful, but assuredly the most safe both for mother and child. This is what the most severe examination will to those, who give themselves the trouble of making it, establish, in contempt of that fashion, by which so pernicious an error, as that of preferring men-practitioners, has acquired more credit and influence than so salutary and demonstrable a truth, as that for which I am contending. In the mean time, let us hear what M. De la Motte himself, a man-midwife, says of those brethren of his, of whom heaven grant there may not exist to this day too many resemblers!