the head of the child, remaining too long in the passage, the child cannot then be kept alive by means of the mother’s blood, whose motion is stopped in that chord, as well by its cooling which coagulates it, as by the compression which hinders it from circulating, for want of which it is a necessity for the child to breathe, which he cannot do till his head shall be intirely out of the uterus: therefore when once you have begun the extraction of the child, you must try to procure the total issue of it as quick as possible.” MONSIEUR Levret, who has wrote for no end on earth but to recommend his _tire-tête_, seizes the occasion of the foregoing passage extracted from Mauriceau to tell us, page 51, of the first part of his work. “MAURICEAU acknowledges here, that there are children who have the head so large, as for it to remain stopped in the passage, after the body shall have been wholly got out, notwithstanding all the precautions that can be taken to avoid it.” FROM whence this zealous instrumentarian draws the following conclusion. “Here (says he) is one of those cases, in which my _instrument_ may be of great service.” THIS conclusion however does not to me at all appear a just one. FIRST, because Mauriceau, after those lines of his, just above quoted by Levret, adds immediately the method of practice pursuable in this case, to give a good account of it without the help of instruments. SECONDLY, because we are not at all to be concluded by what any author says, any farther than the truth of things bears him out. Mauriceau[35] might have explained himself better: he might have said, that, in this case, the child should be pushed back a little into the uterus, to have the freer play for its being more easily disingaged: he might have advised, as I have before observed, rather a safer method of proceeding than what he has done. Mr. Levret himself allows this p. 56. Then, still with a view to recommend his forceps, his _tire-tête_, as being absolutely necessary, he continues thus (p. 58.) “THOUGH every thing should apparently have been done that is above set forth, still we are not always so happy as to accomplish the delivery. It sometimes happens, that we cannot get the head of the child out of the uterus. There are of this two examples in the treatise of M. De la Motte, of which I do not think it here out of place to furnish an extract. “MR. De la Motte, in his 253d. Observation, (goes on M. Levret) relates, that in a case in which he was obliged to turn the child, in order the better to finish the delivery, he turned it very easily; that having brought it out as far as to the thighs ... it being alive, he gave its body a half turn, so as to put its face downwards which it had upwards, and that then he continued drawing out the child as far as to the shoulders and neck.