IN this case however it is, that Monsieur l’Accoucheur oftenest looks extremely silly and disconcerted. Though the throws redouble, the child is never the nearer coming out. On the contrary, till its passage is franked by the reduction of the uterus, it bears in vain upon any part, but that aperture, through which alone lies its issue: and, in fact, the harder it bears, the more it obstructs its own deliverance, and damages its mother. Monsieur l’Accoucheur stands by, does nothing, and can do nothing, or worse than nothing, if he should pretend to it: if he had the head, he has not the hand to give the patient any efficacious aid. Then it is, that where thus incapable by Nature, for the manual function, the men-practitioners abuse that excellent, that divine, but here mistimed and misplaced maxim, of leaving things to Nature, of trusting to Nature. The power of Nature is just then, all of a sudden, acknowledged to be self-sufficient, when she really wants human help to redress her wrong. She is then at her greatest need, left to shift for herself. The fruitless pangs increase. Monsieur l’Accoucheur stands by an idle spectator, or perhaps goes about his business. In the mean time both mother and child, exhausted by fruitless efforts, for perhaps four, five, or six days, perish for want of the proper and only relief. Thus the ignorant operators abstain from interfering, when interfering, if they were fit for it, might be of service, only because they cannot so well in this case employ their iron or steel instruments: and as to their hands, they would most probably indeed make sad bungling work of it. Their action, in short, is, if that can be imagined, yet worse than their inaction. SOME of them, in this case, content themselves with saying, that the orifice is as yet too distant, and that nothing is urgent. They go away then, and leave the patient in the hope of some favorable change which is never to happen. They return, and find a strange disorder in the state of things, the child is too far engaged: it is too late to retrieve the damage, as they imagine, and I readily believe, when they have lapsed the due time of operation, of which it is not only probable they knew nothing, but, if they had known what to do, would have done it very ill. Then the vast knowledge and learning of these disconcerted instrumentarians can furnish them no better expedient, than that of murdering the child (as they pretend) to save the mother, though it is not always that the mother does not follow the fate of her poor infant. I KNOW, by my own experience, that often to make a happy end of such deliveries, requires an extreme attention and indefatigable pains. But practitioners should resolve, either to go through with the undertaking as it should be, or not begin it, in such cases, especially where the lives of mother and child depend upon their doing their duty, as they will answer the contrary to God, to man, and to themselves.