DAVENTER, p. 343, of his observations, supposes to us the case of a head stuck in the passage, when the difficulty of the labor shall have been increased, as well by the ignorance, as by the negligence of the practitioner, male or female, that may not have given the proper aid in due time, or not have foreseen the danger; he moreover supposes a complication of obliquity, caused by the mis-conformation of the bones in the patient. If this embarrassment then should not have been foreseen or guarded against, he advises the opening of the head of the child. “THERE is, for this no occasion (says he) for any instruments of a particular make; a common knife guarded as far as the point, a pair of scissors, a pointed spatula do the business. The opening they make may be dilated with the fingers, and the brain taken out; after which, you seize the head with your hand, or with a linnen cloth, and try, in this manner, to bring away the body. When I say you may draw the head out with a linnen cloth, I mean a broad strip or fillet cut lengthways of the cloth, and hemmed in the borders, or any piece of linnen that is fine and strong, to be passed round the back of the head, and bringing in under the chin, you twist the fillet, and draw out the child.”——He then adds, that he much esteems this method; that those, whose hands are _small_ enough to pass this linnen round the back of the head, without opening it, are not obliged to open it, and have therein a great advantage over others. THIS last method proposed by Daventer ought doubtless to be preferably pursued, as being the less cruel. But, in the first place, it is utterly impracticable. A head represented to be hitched or jammed, does not leave the least hands that can be imagined room or liberty to pass a fillet round the back of the head, in order to bring it under the chin. But were it even practicable, it would be useless, and dangerous: useless, in that the hands alone, so introduced, might of themselves, little by little, disingage this head; dangerous, for that this fillet might most likely produce the effect that fillets commonly do, strangle the child. MAURICEAU, to conquer this obstacle of the head so stuck, proposes several kinds of crotchets, to apply various ways, to the head of the child, after having scooped out the brain, by means of an opening made in the skull. He gives us several examples in his observations, but as they are absolutely fit for nothing but to inspire horror, I shall refrain from specifying them. Dyonis is of the same opinion with Mauriceau.