repeat it, never, out of reach of the hand, where that steel-instrument of his, a forceps, can bring it away. MR. Rathlaw also tells us of another instrument, of which he gives us an account. He had got the secret from one Velsen, a physician at the Hague. This Velsen had it of Vanderswam, who had been a pupil of Roonhuysen, the inventor of this pretended nostrum, with which he always helped the women in labor, snug under the bed-cloaths, the better to conceal his miraculous secret. He had long promised his pupil to discover it to him. “IN short (says Mr. Rathlaw) one day that Roonhuysen was returning from laying a woman, a burgomaster of Amsterdam came to speak with him: in the hurry Roonhuysen was to receive him, he hid his nostrum-instrument in some apartment. His curious pupil (Vanderswam) who had for several years been watching such an occasion with great eagerness, found it, and took a draught of it. This instrument was in a case with two long steel crotchets, and a piece of whalebone, in the shape of a pipe for smoaking, only shorter, and at one of the ends of which was a piece of steel, of the shape of an acorn, and there was no other instrument in this case.” IF Mr. Velsen is to be believed, it seems, on the one hand, that Roonhuysen made the whole science of midwifery consist in the knowledge and use of this his instrument, since it is there said, that Roonhuysen had promised this pupil of his to teach him the art of midwifery, but taught him nothing of it; and indeed it does not appear, that he had hidden any thing from Vanderswam but this wonderful instrument, with which he used, under the bed-cloaths, to smuggle the child through the difficult passage[37]. ON the other hand again, it may be judged, that this pretended marvellous instrument was not of effectual enough service to its inventor, unless in those cases where he might as well have done without them, since this very same Roonhuysen made use of crotchets, doubtless, when he found his instrument fail him. O women! women! thus it is that your pretious lives, and that of your children (to say nothing of the additional tortures you are put to, as if those of Nature’s own ordering were not already enough) are trifled with, in practices being tried upon you with such instruments, for which you are besides to pay exorbitantly; and all for what? To increase the practice of some quack, who raises into notice his worthless name, or perhaps swells some work of his, published by way of advertising himself, with the rare boast of having delivered you with an instrument, that has only, not murdered some of you, though it may sometimes perhaps have done you irreparable damage, and will have always occasioned you an unnecessary increase of pain and danger. Is it possible to inculcate this truth too often or too strongly to you?