“I SLIPPED (said he) my hand along this little arm, to go in quest of the feet, which I presently found, and after having closed them together, I brought them away out of the uterus. The body followed till it came to the neck. The patient being on the edge of the bed, which was very high from the ground, and where there was not room enough left to support the child in proportion as I drew it out, I was obliged to give it a woman to hold, while I proceeded gently to disengage the head which was stopped in the passage. This was no wonder, considering the streightness of it, being correspondent to the littleness of her size; considering withal the advanced age of the patient, the length of time since the discharge of the waters, during which the uterus being irritated by the lingeringness of the labor, the presence of the arm in the passage had caused an inflammation, consequently some induration, all these joined to the time that the fœtus had been dead, which as before observed was a very small creature, were reasons more than sufficient to manage very tenderly with the child, so as to bring it away whole. This (says M. De la Motte) induced me to introduce my hand flat towards the _frænum labiorum_, and to put my middle finger into the child’s mouth, while my other hand was over its neck. My measures being thus taken, I desired the midwife, while I should disingage the parts, to pull softly, for fear of an accident. But she nevertheless, senselessly and foolishly, gave it much such a pull, as the woman’s husband I have before mentioned. This indeed forced out the body of the child, but severed from the head, which remained in the uterus.” HERE it may be observed that Monsieur Levret, by this preamble, on the one hand prepares us for the necessity of his instrument, by a constant supposition of cases, in which, notwithstanding all the precautions that may be taken, it happens sometimes (as he says) “that it is not possible to terminate happily the delivery, nor get the child’s head out of the uterus;” to support which opinion he produces the two examples from De la Motte, which I have just before quoted. ON the other hand, he owns, as it were, _en passant_, that there are means, which he even explains of accomplishing successfully the deliveries, in such labors, by solely the operation of the hands, avoiding the faults committed by M. De la Motte, after which, as if those faults were any proof in favor of his instrument, he concludes, that, “if through any cause whatever, this case was not to be got over, the child should be given to some one to be held, with the precautions before set forth, and that then the operator was to proceed with his instruments.”