LITTLE by little the truth will come out. Little by little, even the men-practitioners themselves, will be forced to allow, that the very least imperfect of the instruments are prejudicial and dangerous: though perhaps they will not speak out the whole truth, and confess that total uselessness, which would, in so great a measure, imply their own. But common-sense will inform whoever consults the light of it within himself, that these instruments are of a nature so heterogeneous, from the service expected from them, so impossible to be adapted to the infinitely tender texture of the organ of gestation, that the very best of them must occasion lacerations, especially by the opening of the branches, the strain of which bears upon the mother’s body, and can never but hurt the child, in crushing it’s head; as they make that to be done precipitately, about which Nature has, for taking her own longer time, no doubt a very good reason, if there was no more than that one of gradually dilating the passage; but there are probably many others. ART should aim at imitating Nature: now Nature proceeds leisurely, instead of which the forceps goes too quick to work. The action of it depends on an artificial compression, which begins by moulding, or rather crushing the child’s head, adaptingly to the figure of the pelvis, to facilitate its extraction; and though the divine providence has in its wisdom provided for the preservation of the human species, by means of what is called the duramater, and by the void of the sutures in the cranium of children, the manual compression of the instrument is either too strong or too weak. If too strong, the child is lost; the head being so compressed by the instrument, that the brain escapes through the occipital cavity: if it is too weak, so that the head has not been sufficiently compressed, nor it’s bulk competently diminished, in attempting the extraction, not only the uterus can scarce escape the being wounded, but the perinæum and the bladder the being torn: and indeed in either case they hardly escape, the instruments occasioning various inflammations and contusions, of the worst consequence, both in the internal and external parts, besides the great danger of the blades slipping and violently hurting the mother, not to mention the painful divarications and shocking attitudes in order to the introduction.