NOW these two cases clearly imply, that Mr. Levret’s curve forceps is capable of going into the uterus in search of the child’s head, even when it is not engaged in the orifice: for here the case meant, is either that of a head remaining detachedly in the uterus, after having been severed or torn away from its body: or of a head not separated, but remaining in the uterus after the body shall have come out, and part of it is still in the vagina. IF therefore Mr. Levret’s forceps had the advantage over the common forceps, confessedly insignificant in these cases, of being able to lay hold of these heads, he might be somewhat in the right to exalt it as he has done. But at present he must be wrong, which ever side he takes. The dilemma is self-evident. He is in the wrong to deny what he had certainly said. He is in the wrong to complain of being taxed with an opinion, which his own allegations prove he had entertained. I therefore refer Mr. Levret from himself to himself. If he did not believe, that his curve forceps had over all the rest the properties he sets forth, why has he so confidently affirmed them? and after affirming them, why would he hinder us from thinking that he believed what he affirmed? I AM here to observe, that if I have made use of the terms of “a head not _separated but remaining in the uterus after the body shall have come out, and part of it is still in the vagina_,” it is purely because I would not change any thing in the expression of this celebrated instrumentarian. It is this exactness of quotation, that has made me conform myself to his manner of speaking, in my answer upon this difficulty. Otherwise, I own, I do not apprehend the propriety of his description of the case. It surprized me too the more, in so intelligent a writer as Mr. Levret, that he should represent to us a body come out of the uterus, and yet remaining in the vagina; as if, on such an occasion, the vagina could be distinguished from the orifice of the uterus. It is even stranger to me yet in Mr. Levret, for that he himself, in a note, p. 106, of his observations (by me before quoted) expressly says, that “when you are for using this forceps, it is absolutely necessary that the orifice of the uterus should be, as it were, totally erased or defaced;” so that the vagina and orifice should be laid into one. (See p. 420.) HERE follows a much more material contradiction, rather however to common sense than to Levret himself, to which I intreat the reader’s particular attention. OBSERVATIONS, part the 2d, p. 160. Levret gives us the following preliminary general precept. “THERE is, says he, a general precept by which it is established, that a surgeon ought never to thrust instruments into deep places, without guiding or conducting them with the hand, or with the extremity of the fingers of that hand that does not hold the instrument.”