DR. Smellie has, however, himself salved one of Levret’s objections to his instrument, as to any offensive smell or infection that might be contracted by the use of it. (Treatise of Mid. p. 291.) “The blades of the forceps ought to be _new covered_ with stripes of _washed_ leather, after they shall have been used, especially in delivering a woman suspected of having an _infectious_ distemper.” Certainly, certainly, not only the Doctor’s nine hundred pupils, but all other practitioners, that use this famous instrument, will do well to observe this injunction. It is the very best thing they can do, next to never using it at all. I COME now to the boasted instrument of Levret; who is the last, at least that I know of, who has invented a new make of a tire-tête, or forceps corrected, over all that have appeared since Palfin. He gives us, in a book written on purpose to recommend it, a minute analysis of it, and an ingenious delineation in some pretty prints of it. The work is intitled, _Observations sur les causes et les accidens de plusieurs accouchemens laborieux_. BUT to make use of the instrument or instruments which Levret recommends, requires not only a hand consummately dextrous and skilful in the art, but an infinite number of perplexing precautions, as may be seen, p. 106, and seq. of his observations. I WILL not here undertake a circumstantial account, I shall content myself with mentioning some of them. “There is here (says our author) a very important remark to be made, when you are for using this forceps. It is absolutely necessary that the orifice of the uterus should be, as it were, totally effaced or erased, that is to say, that the vagina and the uterus should, in a manner, no longer form other than one and the same cavity, from a sort of uninterrupted continuity, because, without that, there would be a danger of getting hold of the orifice of the uterus between the head of the child and the instrument, which would be extremely hurtful. “I OUGHT (continues he) to add, that great attention should be given to the attenuation of that orifice, for before it’s intirely disappearing, it becomes sometimes so thin, and so exactly close fitted to the child’s head, that, without a most scrupulous examination, one might commit a mistake.” BESIDES the measures, observations and remarks this practitioner urges in that place, which require infinite attentions, he adds to them the following ones.