NOW though no one can be more intimately convinced than I am, that Nature, acting for ever upon surer principles than Art, possesses resources which she often displays in the most desperate exigencies; I own, that in this case I am not for totally relying upon her beneficence[32]. Here is a wrong to redress, not owing to her, but to deficient practice; and this wrong can hardly be repaired by her alone, unless something of a better practice contributes to relieve her. That practice is not, however, the less recommendable for being plain and obvious. The most gentle, the most guarded, but withal the most efficacious means must be tried, little by little, to insinuate the fingers and hand into the uterus, how closely contracted soever it may be; for yield it will; and then seize the head by the mouth, the occipital cavity, or whatever other part affords the least slippery hold, without waiting whole hours, as do certain ignorant or negligent practitioners with respect to the after-birth, who give time to the uterus to enter into too strong contraction. SOME authors, and other persons of much that depth of practical merit, having learned solely by the experience of delaying to bring away the after-birth, that, to abandon thus the head of a child remaining in the uterus, was, at the same time, to expose the mother to the highest danger, judged it expedient to have recourse to auxiliary methods. They have therefore employed and directed for this purpose such edge-tools, as instruments and crotchets of different figures, some to incide and separate the bones of the skull; others to bring them away piece-meal, or all together, according as they should find the operation the easiest. [33] DYONIS and Mauriceau are of opinion, that the crotchet should be thrust into the most convenient place of the head, such as the mouth, one of the orbits of the eye, or the occipital cavity; after which, you are to endeavour to bring away the head by redoubled efforts. But if the crotchet slips, as the head is of a round figure, and may turn like a ball, they direct you to thrust the crotchet into the hole of the ear, then giving some one the handle to hold, you are to strike another crotchet of the same figure in the other ear, and so pulling with both crotchets at once, extract the head, that is to say, if possible. AY, that “_if possible_,” is well added; for with infinite submission to those very _learned_ gentlemen, nothing appears to me more impracticable; and, I fancy, if they had ever made the experiment, they would have found it so. What a blind operation, with such instruments, and in such a place! GUILLEMEAU (Treat. of Mid. Book II. chap. 17.) remarks, that, in such case, you should take the time that the woman has a labor-pain to accomplish the extraction by this method, that is to say, to snatch that moment to extract the head, when you BELIEVE you have got fast hold of it.