I CANNOT then too ardently wish, for the women not to be so cruel to themselves, and to their so naturally dear children within them, as inconsistently to suffer their aim at superior safety, to be the very snare that betrays them into the greater danger, and often worst of consequences, from those male-practitioners, to whom that aim drives them for recourse; while that examination they owe to so interesting a point would issue, or deserve to issue, in rescuing them from such a shameful subjection of body and spirit to a band of mercenaries, who palm themselves upon them, under cover of their crotchets, knives, scissors, spoons, pinchers, fillets, _terebra occulta_, _speculum matricis_, all which, and especially their _tire-têtes_, or _forceps_, whether Flemish, Dutch, Irish, French or English, bare or covered, long or short, strait or crooked, flat or rounding, windowed or not windowed, are totally useless, or rather worse than good for nothing, being never but dangerous, and often destructive. NATURE, if her expulsive efforts are but, in due time, and when requisite, gently and skilfully seconded by the hands alone, will do more, and with less pain than all the art of the instrumentarians, with their whole armory of deadly weapons. The original and best instrument, as well as the antientest, is the natural hand. As yet no human invention comes near it, much less excells it: and in that part it is that the women have incomparably and evidently the advantage over the men for the operations of midwifery, in which dexterity is ever so much more efficacious than downright strength. AND, indeed, let every requisite faculty for the assistence of lying-in women be well considered, and the resulting determination cannot but be, that in the common labors, where the men themselves are either simple by-standers or receivers of the child, or operate with the hand only, they are the very best of them, not comparable to a common midwife, and in those cases, in which they pretend the use of instruments necessary, hardly better than the worst one. So that, not less than justly speaking, they are not receivable, either as substitutes, or even as supplements to midwives.