DR. Smellie in his enumeration of the cases, by which laborious labors are occasioned, which he ranges under seven heads, has intirely omitted this case of obliquity. He has bestowed indeed a whole chapter on the distortion of the pelvis, a case I take to be comparatively infinitely rarer than an obliquity of the uterus. He might as well suppose a frequent vitious conformation of the cheek-bones, as of those that form the pelvis: which, were it so, must necessarily imply a constant recurrence of hard labors in the same woman, which is not often the case. Whereas the liableness of the uterus to an obliquity from various accidents, principally accounts for the easiness of one labor in a woman, being no argument for her not having a hard one in future, or convertibly. I dare aver then, that in the course of my practice, which is not the least extensive one, this very case of obliquity has occurred to me oftener than all the others put together, and indeed caused me the most pain to remedy or conquer. Why then such an omission by these writers? I cannot conceive, unless that they were aware of the consequence, obvious to be drawn from thence, that women, by the superior fitness of their hands, must be the properest to apply the topical remedy; and that their iron and steel instruments could not so well be set to work in such a case, at least in due time. This is absolutely so true, that in the case of this very obliquity, which occasions most of the very lingering labors, for which the midwives, who have not preventively exerted themselves to reduce it, and thereby to clear the passage for the fœtus, have no remedy but patience; those very lingering labors, I say, which shall have thus arisen from the want of skill or prevention, furnish the men-practitioners with a pretence to dispatch them with their instruments. Thus they, often murderously for the child, and injuriously to the mother, terminate many a delivery, which a gentle and constant reduction of the uterus would have so much more safely and less painfully accomplished. And how accomplished? evidently not by any violence to Nature, but purely by redressing the wrong she is in, oftenest not by her own fault, but by some adventitious cause, in which she has been rather a passive sufferer than originally herself deficient. A justice this of distinction too often refused her, and from which too many errors of practice arise, perhaps in more cases than this. HOWEVER, this is certain, that this case of the obliquity of the uterus deserves much more notice and attention than have been paid to it. It is one of the most important difficulties of the art.