IT would be superfluous here to analise all the causes of such obliquity, because, being mostly natural ones, there is no preventing them. But there are some causes of it, or at least, that appear to me to be sometimes the causes of it, that it cannot be improper for me to premise here, for precaution-sake. I HAVE then some reason to think, that both here and in Holland the stays contribute much to the obliquity of the uterus. For though women, during their pregnancy, may perhaps wear them looser than at other times; yet their natural hardness pressing on the belly, with the stiff whalebones, always too many if there are any at all, cramp the fœtus and the womb, to which the stays too often give a bad situation, according to their motion or swagging more to one side than to the other, in their state of looseness; and if they were laced tighter, that would be yet more dangerous. I COULD wish then, that women with child would either content themselves with wearing a bodice only, or stays without any whalebone, but at the back just to serve the loins, and even those not to come so low down as I have seen some. The obliquity of the uterus is much rarer in France than it is here, for which I cannot account otherwise, than from the women there avoiding any prejudice from their stays, during their pregnancy. There is another cause, as I apprehend it, of the lateral byass, which is the lying too constantly on either side, whence the uterus contracts a habit of inclination to that side. The probability of such an effect I submit to the anatomists, as I speak here only conjecturally, and not with the presumption of certainty. THE obliquity of the uterus may be discerned from the difficulty there will be, in touching, to come at its orifice. And it is by touching alone that you can hope to discover which way its deviation points, whether it is placed too high towards the _os pubis_, too much turned towards the curve of the vertebræ, or in a lateral direction, towards either the right or left _ilion_. But which ever way that mis-direction points, the difficulty of the delivery is proportionable to the degree of it: and the skill and knowledge of the midwife in not only the reduction, but the keeping of the uterus to its due position, till the delivery is accomplished, form one of those principal branches of the art, for which the gentlemen-midwives must be naturally so unfit. THERE are very few authors who have treated of this obliquity of the uterus. Some do not mention it at all, others speak of it, but so slightly as to escape attention.