THOSE who will give themselves the trouble to peruse the authors who have preceded thus, will find, that their method differs very little from that of la Motte and Mauriceau, which most assuredly kills the child if it is not dead: and the ascertainment of the death of a child stuck in the passage is so difficult, that the ablest practitioners cannot answer for not being mistaken in it. The reader will please to apply here what I set forth, p. 139, and following, to which I beg leave to refer. MAURICEAU, at length, imagined, that he had out-done all others, in his invention of an instrument he calls a _tire-tête_. He specifies it in his 26th observation. But it is as dangerous as the crotchets, since, in order to use it, you must begin by opening the skull with an incision-knife, or with a sort of steel spike, double-edged, which he invented on purpose for the use of piercing the child’s scull at the _fontanelle_, to admit a little round plate of steel of another instrument. MONSIEUR Soumain, and other celebrated practitioners, have acknowledged the insufficiency of this instrument of Mauriceau; but were it good for any thing, as to drawing out the head so stuck, it would for ever be fatal to those poor unfortunates, since it could not fail of killing them if they were still alive. AFTER this we have the tire-tête of Mr. Fried, but it is as murderous as that of Mauriceau, nor answers the intentions which its author had proposed to himself. He has therefore himself had the candor to condemn it, as may be seen p. 154. in a treatise of midwifery, published in 1746, by the care of Mr. Boëhmer, who has added two dissertations to the treatise on this art by Dr. Manningham. MR. Menard, in his preface, p. 24, gives the figure of an instrument, of which the idea seems to have been taken from a twibill, with a ducks beak. Mr. Menard has endeavoured at perfecting it, by having it made angular, shortened, and grooved. He has given it a figure of dented pinchers, with curve claws. He gives us also the figure of an instrument pointed and edged, made like the head of a spear, which he uses for opening the scull, and introducing the pinchers, by means of which he draws the child out by the head, as he keeps pinching the bones of the scull and teguments. By this it is easy to conceive, that this instrument has no advantage over that of Mauriceau, and has all its inconveniences. MANY other modern practitioners advise the use of one or two crotchets, be the child dead or alive, or of a tire-tête, made in form of strait blades, with spoon-bills, to introduce them one after another into the uterus; and after having placed them on each side of the child’s head, and made them meet together, to try the extraction with them.