IT is only for the ignorant to be so rash as to raise an out-cry against the use of all instruments; people who do not know the absolute necessity there is for employing them on certain occasions. This clamor must proceed “from the interested views of some low, obscure and illiterate practitioners, both male and female, who think that they find their account in decrying the practice of their neighbours.” Such is the objection in the words of Dr. Smellie, in his Treatise on Midwifery (page 241.) and for this panegyric, he prepares us in his Introduction (page 55.) where, speaking of the midwives of the Hôtel Dieu of Paris, he first indeed tells us, that the surgeons had, in that hospital, perfected themselves in the art of midwifery; but then for fear that from thence occasion might be taken of saying, that to women it was they were beholden for that perfection; he takes care immediately after to add, that what “got the better of those ridiculous prejudices which the fair sex had used to entertain,” was, that the women or midwives of this hospital “had recourse to the assistance of men in all difficult cases of midwifery.” ANSWER. THESE gentlemen will permit me to tell them that they make great pretentions, and prove little or rather nothing. Calling hard names with a disdainful tone, and with airs of triumph, are not overwhelming reasons. BUT to the point. Those who reject instruments, say you, do not know what they are: they reject them from ignorance. This is soon said. Nevertheless a number of authors, much more experienced and versed in the matter than Dr. Smellie, are of this opinion. Deventer exclaims against instruments; Viardel does the same; Levret admits none but those of his own invention, and rejects universally all others; and well might he except his own, since he wrote only to recommend them. Delamotte was not very fond of instruments: he tells us in his preface, that in a course of thirty years practice, he had not twice made use of the crotchet, though he had an extent of country forty leagues round, in which he regularly exercised his profession, insomuch as to have four lyings-in in a day under his management.