UPON an article of practice, for which M. De la Motte blames the midwives, and what an article? not such as he reproaches to the men-practitioners, murdering, maiming the women, or tearing their children limb from limb, but purely for their applying certain bandages to the belly of women after their lying-in, in order to keep that part smooth from wrinkles; this very author, I say, who allowed the Hôtel Dieu at Paris, where the manual function is wholly confined to women, to be the best school of midwifery in Europe, where he himself wished, and wished in vain, to be admitted to practise, and, in short, from the head-midwife, of which Madam de la Marche he himself probably learned all that was worth any thing in his practice, thus speaks of the midwives bred up in that hospital. “THIS prerogative of having served apprentice in the Hôtel Dieu at Paris, is not for these women, an _indifferent_ matter, for though they were to have no more than a _shadow_ of _sense_, they are persuaded, that in setting themselves off with a _title_ that does not render them more _capable_, they ought to be honored and respected above all others, which they would not fail of being, if they were to give some marks of sufficiency beyond what others can give.[28]” THE nonsense of this objection of Mr. De la Motte is too glaring to need a comment. If an education in the best school of midwifery in Europe, does not give a woman a right to plead it for a title to reliance on her superior sufficiency, without any reason therefore to accuse her of vanity, what can give her a title? BUT to return to M. De la Motte’s sentiments on the practice of the men-midwives; it will easily be seen, that the horrors he objects to their practice, and of which he himself undoubtedly endeavoured to steer as clear as he could, were of a nature, without the least breach of candor, to suppose liable to repetitions wherever so false a doctrine and practice prevail as the substituting steel and iron-instruments, or “artificial hands” to natural ones. LET us now see what Mr. De la Motte thinks of the use of the CROTCHET. “WHEN I settled in my province (says this author[29]) I found several ancient master-surgeons, who pretended to help the women in their difficult, or preternatural labors, solely with the use of the crotchet; without ever, in their life having made any _delivery_, but in that manner, and as soon as they had extracted the fœtus with their crotchet, they left the rest or the after-birth to be brought away by a woman, as they themselves knew nothing of the matter. When they were fetched to help a woman in labor, they took their crotchet, went to the woman, whom they put into posture, and whether the child presented the head, breech, arm or leg, whether it was dead or alive, a woman’s having passed a day and a half in labor was cue more than enough for them to go to work with their crotchet.”