THESE cases are but too frequent in England. I have myself met with several of them, and sometimes even in persons extremely well made, in which I have been obliged to perform this manual aid, for many hours together, ay, even for half-a-day and more by the clock; all my motions keeping time with those of Nature narrowly watched, so as to rectify and adjust the orifice and the uterus; constantly reducing any detortion, and keeping things in their due direction, without tiring, or without losing patience. HERE I ask of my reader, is such work as this, naturally speaking, the work of a man, as Daventer would persuade us? IF the Monsieur l’Accoucheur is an ignorant, or rather not a very intelligent one indeed, the mother, or the child, or perhaps both, will probably be his victims. BUT you say, if he is an intelligent one all will be safe. No; he may perhaps know what to do, but will he have the woman’s faculty of acquitting himself of his duty? all the theory in the universe will not do here without the practical part; and will the hands of a man in that respect ever equal the suppleness, the dexterity, the tenderness of a woman’s? once more, is a man made for such work? I SAY nothing here of the patience so remarkable in the true midwife on such trying occasions. I will grant, that Monsieur l’Accoucheur may, in the view of forty, fifty, or a hundred guineas perhaps, have enough of it not to slacken an attendance on his part, so dangerous, so insignificant, and often so pernicious; that it would be much better to pay him for his absence: I grant then, that he may employ his divine hippocratic fingers in such handy-work, for so many hours together, without stepping into the next room for refreshment; or, in short, without hazarding the lives of the mother and child, by a remission of actual attention and manual assistence. But granting all this, can any one, who has a respect for truth, a respect for his own knowledge and sense of things, a respect, in short, for two such precious lives, as those of mother and child, not, I may say, intuitively, perceive and feel, the impropriety and danger of the practice, in such cases, being committed to a man preferably to a woman?