AS to the second objection, of my not making any distinction of the capable from the incapable men-practitioners. The reason of that is obvious. It results from the fairest comparison of the two sexes, in respect to midwifery, independent of any such examples as have been produced against any particular individuals of that profession in the men. Nature has so favored the midwives, that among them the bad ones are evidently an exception to the general rule, of the fitness of that sex for the art: whereas among men, the bad practitioners are, and must for ever be, the general rule, and the good ones the exception, if so it is, that, in Nature, there can be such an exception: he that makes a practice of using instruments can hardly be one. NOTHING however will more conduce to establish the natural disqualification of the men for this art, than a fair consideration of that capitally essential branch of it, the ART of TOUCHING, in order to ascertain the state of pregnant women, and the difficulties so necessary to be foreknown in order to be lessened or avoided. On due prevention often depends the saving the life of both mother and child; it cannot then be thought a digression, that I transiently give a summary account of this great light or guidance to that prevention, even though this work is nothing of a regular treatise of the art. Of TOUCHING. CONDUCIVELY to a just idea of touching, there should be a just foundation laid of a competent knowledge of the fabric of the sexual parts, of the conformation of the _pelvis_, and of the bones which constitute it. There requires no depth of anatomy to know, in general, that the _pelvis_ is composed of that part of the back-bone called the _os sacrum_, terminated at the bottom by the _coccyx_, of the _ilia_, and the _os pubis_. In the cavity formed by the assemblage of these bones is the _uterus_, suspended between the bladder and the _intestinum rectum_, by four ligaments called broad and round. The two broad ones are a production of the _peritonæum_, on the side of the _vertebræ_, and terminate on each side of the uterus near the fallopian tubes. The round issue on the side of the _fundus uteri_, immediately under the tubes, and from thence passing through the _peritonæum_, and crossing the muscles of the hypogastrium, are inserted at the pubis and common membrane or integument of the fore-part of the thighs. I pretend here nothing further, than to give a summary sketch of these parts, a more particularized one being here needless. Suffize it to observe, that no good midwife can be without a proper and distinct conception of their position and conformation, not only for touching, but for operating with success.