I HAVE very exactly read almost all the modern authors who have written on this art; and have been surprized to observe that whilst, on one hand, they agree, they own, that in England, France, and Holland, people are much come off, or undeceived, as to all those dangerous or mortal instruments of which the antients made use, such as the short broad-bladed knife, (call it, if you please, a pen-knife) the bistory, the crotchets, &c. especially since the invention of the new forceps, or tire-tête: on the other hand, these same doctors tell you, that recourse must be had to crotchets, or to the Cæsarean operation, when the new forceps will not do. A comfortable resource this, in an instrument so boasted as the best discovery that has been made since the creation of the world, and for which we are indebted to the moderns! I HAVE also scrupulously examined all that authors have been pleased to say of great, wonderful and magnificent, with regard to the new forceps of Palfin, as it now stands after infinite corrections, as well in foreign countries, as in this one, which have dignified it with the name of the English forceps; and I find all these great elogiums reduced, at the most, to no more than the proving, as clear as the sun, that it is allowable for an operator, extremely able and extremely prudent, to make use of it, when the business might be perfectly well done without it. FROM thence I deduce my demonstration directly opposite to the pretentions of Dr. Smellie and of his followers. According to the instrumentarians, and according to certain doctors, there are certain occasions, certain cases, in which there is an absolute necessity for employing the forceps. If we will hearken to and follow other doctors of more celebrity and credit, it is not right to make use of it, but when one may very well do without it: for example, after the having obviated all the obstacles which retard the delivery, after having, with the hands only, dis-engaged the head or the shoulders of the child, without which (say these same writers) the instrument would be found insufficient or useless; this palpably implies the being able to do without it. Now since it is not allowable, in good practice, to make use of it, but when it is perfectly needless to use it at all, there is then no absolute necessity for it; as surely, what can be done without, is not absolutely necessary. Be this only transiently remarked. For I reserve most convincingly to prove this proposition in the second part of this work. There I shall treat of all the instruments of our antients and our moderns, and besides an enumeration of them shall demonstrate their danger and uselessness. In the mean time, it must be owned, that either Mr. Smellie has been much misinformed of what passes at the Hôtel Dieu of Paris, in the ward of the lying-in women, or else, which I the least believe, is not sincere in the account he gives us, that the women