“THERE are many people, (adds Mr. Rathlaw) who make a doubt whether this instrument is not the same as that with which the three Chamberlains, brothers, acquired in Ireland and other countries the reputation of being the most eminent men-midwives in the world. In those circumstances in which others employed crotchets, they could, by their manual operation, and with less labor, hasten the delivery of the women in less time, and without the least danger to mother and child.” I AM not unwilling to believe that the three brothers, the Chamberlains, might pass for the most eminent men-midwives in the world, especially in Ireland, where before there never had, as I understand, been seen any practitioners of midwifery but women. As to other countries, these brothers might very easily surpass in skill those, who knew no gentler way of terminating a delivery than by the means of crotchets. Therefore it is that our author adds, that the Chamberlains only made use of the manual operation; he does not add of other instruments. It is a great pity however, that the surgeons of all countries have not yet got hold of, and adopted this marvellous secret of Roonhuysen’s, which would extricate them so gloriously, in their attendance on such difficult labors. They would thereby greatly reduce their armory, from its complex state at present of variety of crotchets, tire-tête, forceps, spoons, blunt hooks, pinchers, fillets, lacs, scissors, incision-knives, and the rest of their tremendous apparatus. ACCORDING then to Mr. Rathlaw, the forceps of Roonhuysen was the same as that of the Chamberlains. How he got the secret from them matters not. He only changed the figure of the blade-parts. In short, our author adds, that to him it seems probable, that this instrument has been brought to perfection by the continual experience of men-midwives, who have successively employed it. He pretends himself to have made some alterations in it for the better, but what they are he is not pleased to tells us. THE illustrious Janckius, a great practitioner, mentions another corrected forceps in his dissertation upon the forceps and pinchers, instruments invented by Bingius, a surgeon of Copenhagen, and of their use in difficult labors, printed at Leipsic, 1750, page 211. This forceps resembles mostly that which the celebrated Monsieur Gregoire, senior, first imagined upon the model of Palfin’s tire-tête. “Janckius, in the same dissertation, tell us, that it would be of service to have spoons or blades of the forceps of various curvatures, and of different lengths, for the shorter the arching, and more crooked the blades or spoons are, the more difficult and dangerous will the application be, according to Chapman and Boëhmer.”