BUT would a woman especially, who loves herself, who loves the child in her womb, and who is capable of thinking at all, sacrifice herself and child to so palpable an imposition, as that of the pretended superiority of the men to the women in this point? She cannot even, well, without repugnance, submit, nor but for the indispensable necessity probably would submit to receive such service even from one of her own sex, whose tender, soothing, congenial softness, must make it more easy and supportable. But what can she expect from a man’s clumsy, aukward, unnatural, disgustful operation, but increase of danger, or of pain, perhaps of both; while she and her child may not improbably be the victims of the rudiments in the art of a man by Nature condemned for ever to be a novice only, and who, for possibly a great hire to assist her, earns it only, as I have before observed, by excluding that due relief he is himself not capable of giving her; earns it by the not preventing enough her pains, and even by increasing her torments; till at length, not unfrequently, some infernal instrument is produced, like the dagger, in the fifth act of a tragedy, and forms the catastrophe of mother, or of child, or of both? Of the EXTRACTION of the head of the FŒTUS, severed from the BODY, and which shall have remained in the UTERUS. I AGREE with our modern writers, that there can hardly exist a more vexatious accident, than that of the head’s remaining in the uterus, after the extraction of the body. There are many causes of this effect. The death of the child for some time past, so that the waters may have had time to relax, to macerate the fibres, and thereby to render them incapable of resisting any efforts; there will result from thence a great difficulty of procuring the total issue of the dead fœtus, without dismembering it. SOME mis-conformation of parts in the mother may also contribute to it, or the obliquity of the uterus, where the child is brought away by the feet. INDEPENDENTLY of all these causes, this accident is almost always the effect of unskilfulness; it is, in truth, so rare, that it will scarce ever happen, where the delivery is conducted by an accurate and able practitioner of the art. If we have some examples, that even under skilful hands this case has come into existence, a thorough examination of it would shew, that it was only owing to the cruel necessity the practitioner may have been under, of being aided by persons not duly qualified to afford the least effectual help, or to conceive what they were directed to do.