THIS last contrivance, as ingenious as it may appear, does not save the child’s life, as all these authors would insinuate. For these instruments, wherever they are applied, must pierce to get a solid hold; without which they could serve for nothing but to crush or lacerate the teguments; so that they should not be used where the child is a live one: and even when it’s dead, the mother is not absolutely safe from the damage they may do, whatever precaution the operator may take, or whatever may be his dexterity of hand. If one of the blades should slip, which frequently happens, it will be difficult for him not to do the mother a mischief. For as to the child, it is very rare that the crotchet does not instantly destroy it. MENARD has again given us another figure of an instrument, to appearance less dangerous; but the make of it sufficiently denotes its want of power in the operation, which is also confirmed by the testimony of the most celebrated practitioners. IT is now (1760) about forty years ago, that Palfin, a surgeon of Ghent in Flanders, and demonstrator of anatomy in the same town, went to Paris, and there presented to the academy of sciences an instrument for extracting, by the head, children stuck in the passage. Gilles le Doux, surgeon of the town of Ypres, put in his claim to the invention of this curious instrument, which has however been ever looked upon as insufficient, and to have too much bulge, to allow its introduction into a place already so difficult by its being blocked up with the body that requires the extraction. After at least a dozen of corrections of this pretended tire-tête or forceps of Palfin, Gilles le Doux himself corrected it, so did afterwards Messieurs Petit, Gregoire, Soumain, Duffé, and I do not know how many more. IN short, one may say, that never did any instrument undergo more alterations than this forceps has done. One of the greatest improvements, according to the opinion at the time here in England, which it received, was that given it by Dr. Chamberlain. Chapman, whose treatise on midwifery is esteemed, to give this tire-tête the greater lustre, tells us, that Dr. Chamberlain kept this instrument a long while a secret; and that the Dr.’s father, his two brothers, and himself, used it with good success. Mr. Boëhmer, public professor of physic and anatomy at Hall, in the Lower Saxony, in the College Royal of Frederic, and of the society of curious Naturalists, from whom I quote this, calls this instrument, I am here speaking of, the English tire-tête, or forceps.